The Vulnerable Scientist

Florence Parsimei is a yougn scientist who at the time the interview was conducted, she was a Research Assistant at IPR as a Research Assistant while doing her Msc in JKUAT in the Schistosomiasi program. She has since grown then. This recording was redone on 30th January 2022. Listen to the first part which was not very clear at the time but one can follow up on the 20 minutes episode then come back to this.

Everyone scientist either young or established ones have a story

to tell and Parsimei is one of those people.

The Vulnerable Scientist is a Kenyan-based podcast that focuses

on scientists' stories about their daily lives, work, and how they got to where

they are. I am your host Sarah Nyakeri, a scientist, informal science

communicator and a hiker. I am a multidisciplinary individual that does digital

marketing and website design during my free time.

The main questions asked that scientists are expected to answer

vulnerable are: How are you, Introduce yourself, how did you become a

scientist, What are the highs and lows you have experienced in your science

career, tell the listeners about your hobbies, what question would you like to

answer that has not been asked and how do you feel after having this

conversation.

Why did I start this podcast? You might ask. When doing my MSc

project, my experiments started to fail at a certain period and it was very

frustrating. I thought, If I finally get a new vaccine target for CBPP in cows,

it would be all smiles but no one will ever know what I went through. I also

wondered how many scientists were going through the same rough patch but did

not openly talk about it?

One day when I had just had a rough day, I talked into a mic

about my day and I felt better. That was the first episode. At first, I thought

it would just be journalling but after some fellow scientists heard it, they

wanted to be Vulnerable too. Since then I have brought scientists from

different fields to tell their stories of the highs and lows they have

experienced with honesty and authenticity being the lead of our informal and

long conversations.

I enjoy asking questions since I am a naturally curious person.

Feedback from the audience, including scientists and non-scientists, is the

main motivation I message scientists or accept their request to be on the

podcast, schedule an interview, edit audio, design the artwork, post it, and

share it on social media platforms. It is a full-time job that requires me to

spend from my pocket with no monetary returns, but I enjoy it.

If you want to be Vulnerable on the show, send me an audio

message either on speak pipe (https://www.speakpipe.com/VulnerableScientistVoicemail )

or anchor (https://anchor.fm/thevulnerablescientist/message).

Feel free to reach out too if you want to talk about a certain topic in the

science career space or anything as a scientist that might have nothing to with

science but affects scientists. The podcast is on social media @TVscientistPod

and Website; TheVulnerablescientist.com. You can support the show (https://www.patreon.com/thevulnerablescientist)

on Patreon or Paypal sarahnyanchera(at)gmail or Mpesa at (254)0718896962 under

Sarah Nyakeri.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.