Coffee Chat Interview with Sheyna Gifford
Sheyna Gifford, M.D., M.Sc., M.A. is a physician, science writer, and simulated astronaut for NASA's long-duration space missions. She is the author of numerous academic papers, posters, podcasts, and a textbook chapter in Global Perspectives on Medicine. A science journalist since 1997, she has been published in newspapers and magazines, and has contributed to the creation of science documentaries for AMC with James Cameron, for National Geographic, VICE and the History Channel. She is currently a rehabilitation physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and a STEM mentor for young women across the country.
Q: What sparked your interest in deciding to major in Specialized Journalism at USC?
A: My first job was in specialized journalism, though we didn’t call it back that back then. I was in a bit of a gap year: taking classes and settling on a major before enrolling at the University of California Berkeley. Most of my work at the newspaper involved taking photographs for feature pieces and sports section. Writing came into play somewhat circuitously, when comet Hale-Bopp came into view in March 1997. Somehow one of the editors, found out that I had an interest in astronomy. He asked me to write an article about the comet, its discovery, its orbit, and its importance as a member of our solar system. The resulting piece took up an entire page in the Daily Californian - 600 column inches! Almost no student of journalism these days will see their story printed over an entire newspaper page. Very few of us back then ever got to see it. It was absolutely thrilling: seeing a science story come to life at that scale and scope. After that, I started majoring in astronomy. I went to work at the new science magazine, the Berkeley Science Review, which still runs today, and the rest is history.
Q: How did you transition from journalism into the medical field?
A: The short answer: I never did! My science and writing careers have run in parallel more or less since the beginning. Communicating what I do in an entertaining, accurate, and accessible way brings my knowledge of whatever scientific field I’m in to a greater depth. I believe that my medical colleague from the specialized journalism program, Dr. Chris Mink, felt similarly: what we do in medicine creates and supports what we do in journalism.
Q: Do you think majoring in journalism at USC helped with your current path or opened more job opportunities for you?
A: Evidence that you are a capable and experienced communicator is a benefit to any career path. It helps you stand out in a significant way and opens doors that would otherwise be closed. I’ll give you an example: After graduating from UC Berkeley, I want to get a job at Harvard, which I only got because I was a writer.
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Going the usual route of applying for a job online at Harvard wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I decided to change my tactic. I plastered the campus with flyers. The flyers displayed an MRI of my brain and advertised in bright, cheerful letters, “hire this brain”. They had tear-offs tabs and listed my English and science degrees. From that, I received two job offers. The principal investigator who eventually hired me told me that the reason she hired me is because, unlike the other highly qualified scientists banging on her door looking for work, I had the ability to convey information effectively. She needed that ability, just as much she needed my capacity as a scientist.
"Evidence that you are a capable and experienced communicator is a benefit to any career path."
- Sheyna Gifford
Another example: A few months after graduating from USC, I was using what I knew about journalistic practices and principles to manage the media for my simulated mission to Mars. As the longest space simulation in NASA history, we had quite a bit of media attention. The effect was only magnified when the movie “The Martian” came out in the middle of our mission. In our many interviews in newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio, the crew benefited and the mission from the lessons that I learned at USC and from my life in journalism.
Q: What advice would you give any students who are interested in both Journalism and another field?
A: My advice? Go for it! If your goal is to do something significant with your life, you are going to need the media to help bring attention to it in a positive, effective, and continual way. Any lab, institution, office, university, or government agency in which or for which you might work is going to value you more highly if you can leverage their image in the media and effectively manage and expand their media presence. If your desire is to go into business for yourself, as many of my esteemed colleagues from USC have done very successfully, cooperating with and communicating with the media will be an enormous part of your business’s success. Or, it might be the cornerstone of your business. Known what they know about how the business works, several of my colleagues have gone on to be very successful PR freelancers.
Q: What was your favorite memory at USC?
A: Any time spent with my amazing classmates, both during school and out of it, was time extremely well spent. We went to each other’s birthdays. We went with one of my classmates to a ballet that she was reviewing for the LA Times. We went out after class and drank wine. If I had to pick one, my single most favorite memory would be the day when I was sitting in KC Cole’s science writing class and had a very pleasant and startling realization. Half my cohort was enrolled in KC’s Class. As I watch them debate some topic in science journalism, I found myself thinking, "I am the most brilliant, the most outgoing, or the most talented person here. In this group, I am thoroughly average. I might even be closer to the bottom of the bell curve … HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!" Your colleagues at USC will be your teachers, allies, friends, mentors, and sources of support for the rest of your life. If I could make a wish for everyone who sets foot on campus, it would be this: "That you have a group of colleagues and instructors who raise you up and keep raising you up the way that mine did, and still do. And may you do the same for them."