When I was a child growing up in Puerto Rico, I was interested in science but did not know any scientists, nor did I understand how science was done. My father worked in the newspaper business and would occasionally find articles and opinion pieces written by Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan that had been syndicated and translated into Spanish by local newspapers. He would cut them out neatly and bring them home as special gifts. I was allowed to read them only after I had finished my homework.
Those short essays were great treats—windows into a wonderful but inaccessible world of possibilities and discovery. Back then I often wondered why scientists did not write more for the public.
Now I know: because it's hard work. But it's also worth the effort.
I know that because I recently published my first opinion essay as a fellow of the Op-Ed Project's Public Voices Fellowship Program. This yearlong experience is designed to help professors like me reach beyond the academic audience and share our ideas and experiences with a larger lay audience.
So I went against my instincts and wrote an essay about nature versus nurture that brought in not only my expertise as a neuroscientist but also my experience as a parent of triplets. Linking the two felt very foreign to me. And seeing my thoughts out there, in the "real world," all of a sudden felt like picking up the microphone in a crowded room that had suddenly gone quiet—powerful and awkward.
On the one hand, I have never been able to stir up as much conversation about topics that I care deeply about as I did with that 800-word essay. On the other hand, the last time I felt this exposed, I was 13 and my mom was calling my aunt to find me a date with my cousin for the junior prom.