Career planning

I have a week before the new semester starts. I have some things that need doing, and hopefully T. and I will get to spend a couple of days on one of the highland islands. Perhaps the most important of those things I have to do is think, hard, about the project I’ll do in the summer, and about my PhD proposals. Funding deadlines begin to loom as soon as the 1st February.

Yet I have no idea as yet. The course that should focus my mind – The origins and subsequent evolution of language – is run during this semester, so I’ll only be a few weeks into it by the time I have to have finished my applications. And our unassessed evolution of language seminars are also this semester. Does the deadline really need to be so soon?

I don’t have to do a PhD, of course. However I’d like to; it’d be fascinating, an obviously good thing to have on the cv and would mean three more years in a great town. But, more importantly, it fits into the career plan that I’ve begun to create and shape in the past two years or so. The job I really want (not to mention giving me three more years to find/create it) is to popularise Science on TV.

Why? Well, it’d be fun for a start, and should provide a healthy income, and that’s the fundamentals taken care of. But there are many other reasons that make it The Job For Me, and they fit into two broad categories: because it’d be rewarding, and because I think it’s important. Those reasons are not, of course, unrelated. And perhaps there’s a third category of reason: I reckon I’d be bloody good at it.

Science, and what Scientists do, is grossly misunderstood by the public and often misrepresented by the media. The basics, like the Scientific Method, are little known despite their simplicity. For example, many people think that ideas somehow get promoted from theory to fact, and don’t appreciate that every idea in Science is there for the shooting; nothing is sacred.

The problem, I think, starts in the classroom. What we teach is not Science, but other people’s Science: We only replicate what has gone before and is known. Did your Science teachers ever ask you to form a hypothesis before the experiement? Probably not, and even if so, did you understand why they asked? If so, you’re either extremely lucky (to have such a rare teacher) or a natural scientist (in which case you already know all this).

And I’m sure it can be made appealing. For example, a few weeks ago I was watching the excellent new food program Full On Food (BBC2, 8pm, Wednesdays) and Heston Blumenthal was on. If you don’t know who he is, go and google his name. He’s head chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a restaurant that possesses a rare three Michelin stars. And one of the reasons he has those stars is the outstanding originality of his food. Salmon infused with liquorice, anyone? How about bacon-and-egg ice-cream? He produces these dishes after much scientific work: He forms hypotheses about what is happening when we eat, tests his hypotheses and produces dishes that exploit that understanding. He is a Scientist, and a successful one at that. Why isn’t there a Science show exploiting such a sexy – and proper – use of Science? There should be (in fact, I think that the format of Full On Food could easily be adapted for a Science show), and I have the energy, passion, knowledge, good looks and communication skills necessary to present it.

Now, do you have any friends who work for the BBC? Can you put me in touch?