About Jenny
By day: cell biologist at UCL. By night: novelist, broadcaster, science writer, sci-lit-art pundit, blogger and Editor of LabLit.com. I blog about my life in science, not the facts and figures.
Author Archives: Jennifer Rohn
In which I offer one little reason
A certain impending – and exciting – move has left me with no time to blog. Tomorrow is my last day, and after a week of holiday, I’ll be flying North (but only about 3 km) to start up a … Continue reading
Posted in Careers, The profession of science
22 Comments
In which not much is left to the imagination
Here’s a sign I snapped during my post-Christmas holiday in Yorkshire. Can you spot what’s wrong with it? It is a classic example of a violation of a rule that fiction writers refer to as “Show, Not Tell”. What it … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
16 Comments
In which we are the last man standing
You know it’s the last day before Christmas break when: 1. All of the communal microscopes are free, so you can run lots of parallel experiments. 2. Whenever you enter a room or corridor, the automatic lights flicker on. 3. … Continue reading
Posted in Silliness, The profession of science
4 Comments
In which we down a few
It seems like only yesterday that Nature Network, in what struck me as a bizarre fit of misplaced paranoia and pettiness, locked some of its most popular bloggers out of their own sites, preventing them from posting their own farewell … Continue reading
Posted in Silliness
14 Comments
In which I long to curl up with a good book
‘Tis the season when colleagues start discreetly disappearing from the lab, only to return a few hours later laden with shopping bags from Oxford Street. There is a run on discarded boxes and packing peanuts in the store room, and … Continue reading
Posted in LabLit, Writing
23 Comments
In which signaling takes the cake
Champagne in plastic cups after a successful PhD viva is still a classic, but you don’t often see labmates getting together to recreate one of your prettiest thesis figures in cake format. Congratulations, James!
Posted in Silliness, The profession of science
9 Comments
In which we leave our mark – or not
I like to watch eddies that form underneath waterfalls in a cascade, the ones you see in creeks of glacial run-off rushing down the sides of mountains. The milky-green water, and everything trapped in it, seems desperate to get from … Continue reading
In which science careers get a fair hearing
Once again I revisit the question broached by Science is Vital in our recent report Careering Out of Control? A Crisis in UK Science Careers. Last week I participated in a round table discussion about this very issue co-hosted by … Continue reading
In which I embark on one last hurrah
So, there is life after a high-throughput screen after all. As the dust settles after publication of my big screen in the Journal of Cell Biology, I’ve been thinking back on the last four years of my lab life and … Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Scientific thinking
13 Comments
In which we lay hands on an oil tanker
Many of you have probably heard about the Science Careers campaign that we at Science Is Vital are currently running – which is also the reason I have not blogged for a few weeks. I’m a little in shock right … Continue reading
