Saturday, April 25, 2015

problems with pseudo writing - self promotion

There was a discussion on twitter the other day about keeping two accounts, one pseudonym and then one 'real name' one for the research and the lab and institute. The overall consensus that I saw was that which ever type you started with, was that one of them will be your 'main' one. The one where you exchange thoughts and feel more like a part of the community. I have thought about the pseud stuff before, but it came to a more obvious "what do I do" last time I updated my CV.

As discussed ad nauseum, always keep your CV up to date since you never know what will happen. Maybe your dream job will open up, maybe your institution will shut down your department, maybe your boss will pull the rug out from under you.... regardless of why, keeping the big original CV-file* up to date is a splendid and important thing to do. (off the soapbox)


Anyhow, I realized that I had a little bit of an issue. See, I've written some things under pseud, but I've also written things under my real name. I don't want to link to my 'real name' publications from here (for example). And until a little while ago, I was fairly ok with not having my 'psudo writings' on my CV. However, it's becoming clearer to me that I'm quite happy with my pieces and I would like to show future job prospects that I can (or think I can) write something that isn't pure science papers but actually something entertaining and worth reading for a larger audience than scientists who reads papers.... diverify my options you might say? Or just plain vanity. I havn't really sorted out the difference there.


I'm not sure if I should add the pieces to the CV and just state "published under pseudo SH" or just say "layman publications" ....


In the meantime, I figured I'd do some self promotion here and point to one of my first writings



Time after time (you end up in lab at all kind of times)

A sinister reality  (it's not always easy being wrong handed)



*I keep a "master library file" with everything in. Then I cull and change it based on the job I'm applying for.


1 comment:

Dr. Dad, PhD said...

You raise a very interesting point. I've kinda been away from my pseudonym for a while (mild understatement), partially because I've been working on my internet branding. I'm still trying to keep the pseud as a venting/learning venue, and use my identifiable accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, FB) to post on science and interact.

Not sure it's working, though, because 1)I think my pseud is far more interesting than my other account (because it is interested in REAL issues) and 2) people interact more with my pseud...