Thread by @ndbrning

It’s my turn to contribute to #YoungScientistNetworking (organised by @QuantumTessera), so here’s the (convoluted) story of how I muddled my way to working at an exam board, running a successful chemistry website (@compoundchem) and being a published author (1/33)

Chemistry was a part of my life from an early age. My Dad was the first in the family to go to university, got a doctorate in chemistry, then jetted off to the US for a few years in the 80s to work on astrochemistry at NASA. Which, as a kid, sounded pretty awesome. (2/33)

My parents had moved back to England by the time I was born, and I grew up in Dorchester, Dorset (on the bottom bit of England for those who don’t know their English counties). I was into drawing, writing short stories, and birdwatching. Not one of the cool kids. (3/33)

By this point, my Dad was working in nuclear energy consultancy, which sometimes led to some odd family trips. During one holiday we visited the Hinkley Point B nuclear plant, where at that time you could get a guided tour (no idea if that’s still a thing!) (4/33)

For whatever reason that trip stuck with me. We got a pamphlet explaining how the reactor worked with cartoon protons, neutrons and electrons, which must have been a pretty good bit of scicomm because I can still picture it even though I misplaced it years ago (5/33)

Nuclear power stations figured weirdly regularly in my childhood, as I also remember my Dad galavanting off to Ukraine for several weeks at one point for something to do with the clean-up work at Chernobyl (6/33)

Anyway, getting back on topic, at school I cruised through most subjects (except Spanish) up to GCSE (16-year-old exams), with science amongst my favourites. When it came to A Level choices I went for chemistry, physics, english literature and maths (7/33)

At A Level, one of the tasks I enjoyed the most was making reaction maps of organic chemistry. I suppose this is technically my first chemistry-related graphic? (8/33)

Unfortunately, I discovered too late at A Level that I couldn’t get away with the relatively light amounts of revision that had seen me through GCSE exams. I struggled through the sciences in particular, despite continuing to enjoy them (9/33)

When it came to university, I pondered doing English (comfortably my best subject), but as I had no idea what I’d do with an English degree I plumped for chemistry instead. I applied to @UniOfBath, missed the grades needed in chem and physics, but luckily got in anyway (10/33)

First year, it would be fair to say, did not go well. I still wasn’t working hard enough and by the end of the year needed to resit an exam to progress to second year. Still, I only had to get 40% to pass – simple enough, right? (11/33)

WRONG. Reader, I misread the unit code for the exam I’d failed, and revised for the wrong one. Only realised when they put the paper in front of me. Still managed something like 39%, but not enough to scrape through to second year. (12/33)

I was offered the option of resitting the whole year for another year of uni fees, or just the exam I’d failed for a small fee. So I took the cheap option, and had a year out of uni, bar sitting the exam, working in Bath, waiting for the year to roll round (13/33)

Back on the rails in second year, I knuckled down and improved in the exams. I eventually came to the end of the BSc with a 2:2 (irritatingly close to a 2:1). And then had to work out what to do next (14/33)

The trouble with my awful first year was that it left me ineligible to do a placement during my degree. So, though I applied for a few lab-based jobs, my lack of experience meant I struck out (15/33)

As a stop-gap I ended up working for the university’s student support services (basically being paid to go to lectures and take notes). Meanwhile, I started to warm to the idea of going into teaching, and eventually applied to do a PGCE (teacher training) at Bath (16/33)

The first school I taught at for my training was Beechen Cliff in Bath, where I had a brilliant mentor in the shape of @physicoyle, who probably recalls me spending way too much time on making lesson resources. I also got to share some lessons with @legophysicsguy (17/33)

After spending most of my degree feeling like I was not that great at chemistry, it was rewarding to feel like I was, at the very least, competent at teaching it. Even if I did teach more physics than chemistry in my training year (18/33)

PGCE completed, a relocation to Bournemouth followed, and I spent an enjoyable two years teaching at Bournemouth School. This classroom is where @compoundchem started! (19/33)

My classroom had bare walls when I started, and I wanted some interesting posters to brighten it up a bit. I couldn’t find anything nicely designed online, so decided to make my own. These were the first @compoundchem graphics (20/33)

With the encouragement of @tinypanni I started the @compoundchem site to share the initial graphics, and also as a blog to write about chemistry that I’d found interesting. Then I realised that turning the blogs into graphics was a great way of summarising them! (21/33)

The @compoundchem site quickly gathered pace. It started in December 2013, and a few months later it was already getting 100K+ views per month, and the graphics were being picked up by various media outlets (22/33)

In April 2014, a couple of publishers contacted me about turning some of the graphics into a book, and by May I had a deal with @orionbooks for a book on food chemistry to be published the following year (23/33)

In June, off the back of some collaborations with @ACSReactions, @laurenkwolf reached out to do a feature on @compoundchem for ACS’s @cenmag. This turned into an ongoing partnership, with me producing monthly graphics for the magazine: cen.acs.org/collections/pe… (24/33)

After a frantic year of teaching and book writing, @tinypanni got accepted onto a masters at Cambridge, so we were up and relocating there around the same time my book was published. Here’s me doing my best smug author look (25/33)

I ended up at Netherhall School on the outskirts of Cambridge, which was… well, without too much detail, certainly a contrasting experience to teaching in Bournemouth. After a year or so, I started applying for school Head of Department jobs elsewhere but without success (25/33)

I widened the net to look at other jobs outside teaching, which is when a chemistry subject advisor job came up at @OCR_Science. It ticked all the boxes – still involved with chemistry and education (and better paid than teaching!) – so I sent in a hopeful application (26/33)

I got the job and this September I’ll have been in my role for five years! I’m aware that non-UK followers won’t be familiar with the UK exam system, so to clarify, we have several companies (exam boards) that offer the exams sat in schools, OCR is one of them (27/33)

My role is a mix of being the company’s chemistry expert, and advising internally, as well as supporting teachers who teach A Level Chemistry. It’s an enjoyably varied role as part of a lovely team, and it’s also been really flexible and supportive during the pandemic (28/33)

Outside of the day job, @compoundchem has continued to go from strength to strength. I’ve collaborated with @roysocchem on several occasions, with @chemDrK for @EducEndowFoundn, won an @absw blog award, and written for @TheCrashCourse (29/33)

Most of these opportunities wouldn’t have happened w/o networking/connections made via Twitter/email, often with people I’ve rarely/never met face-to-face. And I consider myself crap at networking – imagine how many opportunities I’d have had if I was good at it! (30/n)

What’s next? Well, for the day job, I probably won’t stay in the world of assessment forever. But I’ve yet to figure out what I’d want to do instead… (31/33)

@compoundchem has stayed busy, but I’m also saying no to things a lot because with two young kids at home, they’re my priority. I’d like to do more chemistry writing and books at some point, and anticipate actually having the time for that in the distant future (32/33)

If you’ve read this far, I’m impressed. And I'm sorry it was so long. I’ll stop now before it gets even more out of hand (33/33)