What is The Gray Area?

On arriving at college five years ago, I was convinced that I wanted to become a journalist and began charting out my class selection accordingly. Things changed when I took my first course in neuroscience. What was a chance encounter through the Penn curriculum became a turning point in my college career. I was introduced to a mystifying, yet fascinating world of intricate neural networks that encode the barrage of stimuli that we are presented with everyday. My curiosity of how human beings operate was pushed to a new level and I found myself overwhelmed, but excited at how many challenging questions still remained to be answered in the field. At the end of the semester, I chose to study the nervous system in greater detail through coursework and research. Thus began my journey of becoming a neuroscientist.

I soon learned that my interest in neuroscience stemmed from the same inquisitive nature I had as a budding journalist. Moreover, I found myself rambling excitedly about all the things I was learning in my coursework and research to my friends, family and the community at large. However, through my interactions with friends of various academic backgrounds, I discovered a communication gap between scientists and non-scientists, one that was primarily due to a language barrier. Many science articles I found were either mired in technical detail, or sensationalized to the point of gross inaccuracy. Thus, I began looking for avenues to combine my interests in science and journalism to help articulate scientific findings and issues in a language that is both objective and accessible by laymen. In my sophomore year in college, I joined the Journal of Young Investigators (JYI) as a science journalist. I contacted researchers from various backgrounds to discuss their research and explore what impact their findings have on the broader community. I obtained experience in various techniques and nuances of science writing, such as developing ‘hooks’ and describing experiments and findings accurately, but succinctly. My work with JYI ended soon after college and ever since I've been looking for more opportunities in science journalism.  On arriving at UCSF for graduate school in Neuroscience this past fall, I have received a lot of encouragement from my professors and fellow students to pursue this interest in science journalism and I decided to start a blog- The Gray Area. While The Gray Area is intended to be a clever pun on the gray matter that exists in our brains, it also refers to the middle ground of science writing and reporting that I am trying to capture with my blog: one that stimulates the interest of both the lay person and scientists without being overly technical or exaggerated and misleading.  While The Gray Area is in its nascent stages, I have used some of the articles I wrote for JYI as a jumping point; My aim is attract a broad audience with what I hope are though provoking articles that will initiate discussions among people from various backgrounds and in a way, connect scientists to their communities. Feedback and comments from you, the reader, would be most appreciated. Happy reading!