As a science student and from working for the Science faculty at UNSW, I was asked to be a tour guide to show the graduates of 1955 around the university. I was concerned about how these 70+ year olds would view the university considering its large area and its hills and steps, but mini vans over came that issue.

In a van of 10 science graduates from 1955, myself and the driver, I pointed out the universities main buildings, schools and faculties. They asked me questions about the university and reminisced on their university days. Kensington Pub was their drinking place after university, and they were quite keen to give that a visit, but it wasn’t on the tour. They told me how the university had stables, a 9 hole golf course and that the ‘Old Main Building’ was the only building on campus when they attended university (hence the 50th anniversary of the opening of the first major building on the campus).Unfortunately due to the campus’s building construction sites, we were unable to show some buildings in greater detail. We walked them around the library lawn where a few graduates and their wives approached me asking what I am studying. I told them I am doing a Bachelor of Science Communications. “What’s that?” they asked. I explained that science communications is communicating what the scientists say to the public. “So you would work for the ABC?” one of the graduates said jokingly. “Well as a matter of fact, I actually spent part of my internship for my degree working at the ABC for the Science Television show, Catalyst”. End of conversation.

As part of the degree we are to complete an internship in the field of science communication which may relate to our major (mine is Psychology). Rather than spending a day per week at just one workplace, I decided that I would take advantage of such an opportunity and work at three different places. My first work experience was with Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki who is an author and science commentator on radio and television. I basically got to spend the day with a science celebrity. In the morning he appeared on the channel 7 Sunrise breakfast show at 7:50am doing a segment of “Ask Dr. Karl”. One girl had asked Karl why is the sky blue, and Karl answered it with the use of a Lego man, white cardboard, blue texta, and a large yellow ball representing the sun which I held on camera. All these visual aids illustrated why the sky is blue which is due to the blue light transmitted from the suns spectrum of colours colliding with the atmosphere’s air molecules. Because violet and blue are colours with the shortest wavelengths, they become more scattered by this collision making the sky appear blue/violet. But because our eyes are more responsive to the blue colour, we perceive the sky as blue.
We then moved on to the ABC where Karl commentated on a local radio station, triple J and a science segment for BBC from the UK. It was a fantastic day and I learned a lot about what it was like to be a famous science communicator for a day.

My second experience was spent at ABC’s science television show, Catalyst. During my week there, I got to view and conduct my own research which related to my psychology studies, observe online, offline and compile editing and I got to watch a live recording of the news. I gained a great insight into the world of television, how a television show gets produced and the amount of work which goes on behind the scenes to produce the show.

My last experience is currently being spent with Luna Media, a publishing company which is about to launch a new Australian science magazine called Cosmos. I have been spending a day per week at their office where I have experience the post-production and production phase of a magazine about to appear on newsstands. In addition I have been researching for an event which the magazine will hold in relation to a head-to-head discussion with scientists, philosophers, researcher, or ethicists on a contemporary issue.

If you would have asked me in high school if this is what I would have chosen to pursue a career in, my answer would have been no. I didn’t want to do just a straight science degree and at the time I had a friend in her second year of the science communications degree who was thoroughly enjoying it. From visiting the courses and careers day and looking at where science communication can take you, I thought it could suit me. Science journalism would be alright, although after a year at university I realised that I am not that keen on writing, but I found that there is more to science communication than just science journalism.
When calling up places to possibly do my internship, a lady from the ABC asked me “Are you interested in the journalism side or the producing side?”
“Producing? What’s that?”

I am very interested in seeing how things come together, for example a television show, a magazine, a website. I like to view behind the scenes of how the final products came to be produced. But I wasn’t aware that my interest could be a profession.
As you have read from my brief encounters from my internship, I have gained a lot out of the internship so far and look forward to pursuing the work force as a science communicator. Hopefully in fifty years time, it will be myself in a mini van sharing my university and success stories with a science student and I only hope that he/she will also take advantage of the opportunities which university has to offer.