From wanna‐be reporter to Voice of America journalist

After four busy summers studiously measuring the minute details of clouds, I spent my last summer as a graduate student in a newsroom, far away from the cockpit of a cloud‐probing airplane. It was not just any newsroom but Voice of America's politically charged newsroom in Washington, D. C. Almost overnight, this California‐for‐lifer was living and working amid the hustle and bustle of the nation's capital. As a half researcher–half science educator and wanna‐be science writer, I had long dreamt about working as a science reporter for a summer. I had spent the past 5 years as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department working on my thesis research on the microphysics of summertime marine clouds.