Episode 006: A Love For Science

Hey, everyone, you're listening to the Curious Lens podcast. I'm Matthew Cicanese.

On today's show, we're diving deep into my science degree and how that transformed my path. Would I fall in love with research and abandon the arts? Would creativity rule the day? Or perhaps something completely unexpected was in store.

Growing up as a kid, one of my favorite things to do in the backyard was to turn over rocks, leaves, twigs, and everything in between, looking to see what wildlife I could find in my Florida backyard. It was in this lush forest that I learned about the building blocks around me and how everything was interconnected. I was starting to understand the bigger picture by looking at one piece at a time. Before I found photography, I was only looking at these pieces through a magnifying glass, but after discovering the camera, I was able to translate these moments into memories.

This connection to my creativity has always remained strong, and I have a unique bond in my curiosity, especially when studying the sciences. Fast forward to college again, and the end of my first year had taught me much. I learned about basic biology, botany, and chemistry to get things started, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. But I was determined to keep creativity in the mix.

My first year alone, I took multiple courses in other disciplines, including the communication and graphic design fields. In communication, I took photojournalism and shot for the college newspaper, learning to share visual stories with photography and cover topics out in the world. At the same time, I was learning about the basics of graphic design - shape, line, form, color, pattern, texture - all of these different things that made up the entire world around us.

That I never really thought twice about learning to peel back these layers of life made me all the more curious when I got back in the biology class, looking closer at the world around me through a microscope lens instead of a camera lens.

By the middle of my science career, I was expanding my interest to include environmental science and marine biology. At this point, I had decided that environmental studies was where I would concentrate my focus. In addition to that photojournalism course, I also took interpersonal communication, public speaking, desktop publishing, and other courses that taught me how to connect the communication dots.

For my graphic design minor, I also took Typography and layout, printbased, graphic design, and other courses to hone my creativity. By the end of my undergraduate degree, I had a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies. I also had three internships under my belt.

The first was with the US. Forest Service with my local ecology unit. My partner Erica and I reached out and expressed our interest in getting more involved in learning about the forestry and biology work that that division did. It was a long, hot summer, but we learned a lot, and we were gracious for them opening their doors to us.

The second internship I had was with the Moat Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. I was a member of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program or SDRP, and it was this fantastic opportunity to learn about endangered bottlenosed dolphin species, what's being done to research them and protect them, and what we can do to help spread the word on why they're important and how to help.

The last internship I had before finishing my science degree was with the Duke University Lichen Laboratory. So, a lichen is this weird mix of a fungus and an algae. They grow on rocks and trees, soil, and besides of buildings, sometimes even on tractors or cars. Lichens cover almost 10% of the Earth's surface, but they're on our minds less than 10% of the time.

When I learned what they were for the first time in my path to my science degree, I was absolutely fascinated. And lichens quickly became a lifelong deep dive. I had invested in a book, Lichens of North America, and started to learn as much as I could about these beautiful and awe-inspiring species.

When I started to approach the end of my undergraduate career, I talked to my academic advisor and mentor about what was next. With one final summer before graduating that winter, I had an opportunity maybe I could find a way to reach out to the people who were part of this book. And sure enough, the back of the book listed the names, organizations, and details on how they were involved.

As it just so happens, my mentor is an alumnus of Duke University, and with a few emails, we had a conversation going with the lab that I was interested in working with, the one that we found in the back of the book with a little bit of digging from microbiology to fieldwork in the coast. The time in my environmental studies degree taught me a lot.

I wasn't a perfect student by any means, and in a lot of cases, I was going by the skin of my teeth. I'm not the best test taker, but when it comes to learning, I couldn't have a deeper passion. The more I mixed other disciplines with my core courses in science, the more everything started to make sense about how stories could connect it all together.

But I had a big decision to make. With an environmental science degree in hand and another crossroad, would I stay in the world of science or dive headfirst into the universe of storytelling?

Join me in the next episode to find out!

Until then, stay curious.