The first piece I ever wrote AND PUBLISHED

Surprise, it’s a scientific paper in the field of astrobiology! Yes, I have a previous life as a professional planetary scientist. Starting during a summer research internship in 2015, I wrote and eventually published my first first-author paper, entitled ALMA Detection and Astrobiological Potential of Vinyl Cyanide on Titan.

If you don't know what those words mean, don't run away! :) I will explain them.

ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is a state-of-the-art radio telescope located at an elevation of 5000 m (16,000 ft) in the Atacama Desert in Chile. I used data from this telescope for my research.

Isn't it beautiful?? And the data it produces is stunning!

Astrobiology is defined as "the study of the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe" according to the NASA Astrobiology Institute. But it could be more concisely summed up with just one word (and one punctuation mark): "Aliens?"

When I said "astrobiological potential," I meant the potential for this molecule to be relevant to the possibility of life on Titan.

Vinyl Cyanide, also known as acrylonitrile, is a molecule with formula C2H3CN. It's shaped like this:

And finally, Titan is Saturn's largest moon. Here it is!:

In this visible-light image, Titan looks like a featureless blob of orange haze, but this belies the fact* that Titan is actually the most interesting body in the entire Solar System!

*Okay, this is actually just my opinion...but I think I'm right :)

Titan is the only body (besides Earth) known to have lakes and seas of liquid on its surface. However, with a surface temperature of -290°F (-179°C), Titan is far too cold for liquid water! Instead, the seas are composed of mostly liquid methane and ethane (similar to the composition of natural gas). This is fascinating from an astrobiology perspective because all known forms of life require water as their solvent. Earthly lipid membranes could not function in cryogenic methane. Would it be possible to form any cell-like membranes under these conditions?? Well, we're still not sure, but simulations indicate that vinyl cyanide would be the best candidate molecule for formation of these membranes. This is what made our detection of vinyl cyanide in Titan's atmosphere so exciting!

Back to the subject of writing...

I don’t think my writing style has significantly changed since writing this paper. In fact, I’ve used the sentence “The observed spectra are shown in Fig. 1” so many times that I now purposely use it as an inside joke with myself (This is probably only funny to me). Of course, I naturally use different words when writing for a technical audience vs. the general public. Also, I try to tone down the passive voice when I'm not writing scientific papers (Passive voice is a classic hallmark of that "genre"). But even when writing fiction, I tend to have a matter-of-fact style. (My recent experimental poem breaks this mold, but it's too soon to tell if this will be a lasting change in my style or just a one-time thing!) The much more significant change has occurred in my perspective and viewpoint.

Can you guess the emotional state of the author who wrote the following text samples?

We used radiative transfer modeling to constrain the abundance and altitude of vinyl cyanide in the atmosphere (see Materials and Methods for details).

Confirmation of the presence of vinyl cyanide on Titan is especially interesting with respect to the possibility of cell membrane–like azotosomes (2).

The actual ethane fraction may be lower than assumed by Dubouloz et al., which is predicted to reduce the amount of dissolved C2H3CN by a small amount.

If you guessed "severely depressed," you are right, but I really don't know how you guessed that!

At the time of the writing and publishing of ALMA Detection and Astrobiological Potential of Vinyl Cyanide on Titan (2015-2017), I was extremely insecure and depressed. In fact, this time period included the very lowest point of my life, which occurred in fall 2016.

Scientific papers take WAY longer to write than "normal papers" for school assignments. In college, I would normally take 2 days to write a 5-7 page paper--one day to plan and start drafting, and one day to finish writing and revise it. But for some reason, even a first draft of this scientific paper was taking me forever (i.e. months). Scientific papers naturally take a very long time to write because of their extreme information density: literally every sentence of a scientific paper is packed with meaning and most likely requires either a citation or data analysis to back it up. Therefore, everyone needs more time to write a scientific paper than an average paper for school, but I didn't realize that at the time; I just felt bad about how long it was taking me to write it. The longer I took, the worse I felt, which just made it harder and harder for me to get work done--a classic vicious cycle.

One good lesson from this time, which I actually did implement even while pretty severely depressed, was don't be afraid to ask for help. In late 2016, I finally asked my advisor (second author on the paper) for help with the revisions and response to reviewers. This was a great decision and it allowed me to actually get the paper done and eventually published!

Publication Day

This paper got a very large amount of press attention. On publication day, I received numerous phone calls from people who wanted to interview me about the paper. I should have been overjoyed about this opportunity and recognition, but...I wasn't. I was busy hating myself about a calculation that I thought I had done wrong in the paper (which I later realized was actually correct!). Back then, I just wasn't really capable of happiness. My mind state was just too dark, and it would take any and every opportunity I could think of for hating myself.

Now

No more! I spent far too many years being absurdly insecure and continuously feeling bad about myself & my writing productivity (or lack thereof). Writing is an activity I've loved since childhood. I'm not going to let it be a source of misery anymore! On the contrary, I'm now fully utilizing it as a source of joy! Although I do have writing goals I want to accomplish, I refuse to use self-imposed stress and self-recrimination as "motivational" strategies anymore. They made me miserable and didn't even make me productive (in fact, the mental health damage severely reduced my productivity for years).

In the past, if I was falling behind on a goal, I would generally panic and hate myself about it. Now, I'm much more constructive! Feeling bad about getting behind schedule is actually not helpful at all, so now even if I'm "not succeeding," I don't feel bad! Instead, I recommit with optimism and either strategize about how I can get back on track or re-plan based on a more realistic schedule. Of course, I don't feel completely confident 100% of the time, but I view any self-doubt as temporary and ultimately unimportant. What is important is my long-term happiness. Striving for goals that are important to me is good for my long-term happiness, but not if I end up sacrificing my mental health in the attempt! Therefore, taking care of my mental health is always the top priority.

Happy writing, everyone!

~~~

(Full disclosure: I did previously get a poem "published"(?) when I was about 12, but I tend to not acknowledge its existence because I suspect it was bad and did not deserve to be published, lol. However, I haven't looked at it in YEARS, so it's possible I'm wrong. Let me know if you want to see a post about this poem... I'm sure my mom could dig it out of storage for me.)

~~~

Thank you for reading! Click here if you want to read my vinyl cyanide paper. Do you have any questions about Titan, astrobiology, or how scientific publishing works? Comment below and I'll do my best to answer them!

For more astrobiology-related content, check out my poem. If you're still struggling with excessive self-doubt, here is a post about a book that hugely helped me.