by Janice Nigro Being a nomad is great. Until you realize that your closest friends live nowhere close. So when the last minute opportunity came up a few weekends ago to travel to Seattle to see some friends from the USA who I met in Norway and now live in Tasmania, I took it (yes,... Continue Reading →
The something, not nothing approach to New Year’s resolutions
Janice Nigro I just got done discussing how much I dislike New Year's resolutions, and now here I am writing about them. Because if you're like me, New Year’s resolutions set up a certain dilemma. Panic sets in already on New Year’s Eve when the pact with the new year might fall apart at the... Continue Reading →
The bonus you get from living overseas
by Janice Nigro The idea of living overseas always captivated me. I imagined myself speaking a second language fluently and sharing my life with a man with an accent. I derived this cliché of a fantasy from some combination of movies, National Geographic, my Sicilian background, and Spanish class in 5th grade. I blew an... Continue Reading →
Home is where my pasta machine is
by Janice Nigro A plane is that modern vehicle of irony, speeding you through the air at times to areas of the Earth that might still be in the stone age. Or at least into another apparent universe where we don’t understand the language, we don’t look like anyone else, and we don't have the... Continue Reading →
The artist in you: Water&Wood 2019
by Janice Nigro I have been living in Southern California for several years now. I know, I hear a collective “aww” it can’t be that hard to live here-sun, palm trees, and the ocean wilderness right there in front of me. But you always give something up to get something else. In my case, I... Continue Reading →
How I got my first byline in a major media outlet
A PhD in biology isn't the direct route to becoming a travel writer, but my wish to be paid for a travel story recently came true. Not only was it my first paid travel article, but it was also my first byline in a major media outlet. “How did you get your article into the... Continue Reading →
The Christmas pasta
by Janice Nigro Families get together over the holidays. Exchanging gifts and watching movies. And eating. And well... eating. Growing up I would say Christmas food for me was a lot about the cookies. My grandmother made the best cookies on the planet. She always had cookies in a cookie box, a rectangular Tupperware number,... Continue Reading →
The drama around the undrama
by Janice Nigro Blah blah blah...more studies performed to investigate gender disparity in science. We research the issues, we write about them, we even have to answer questions in our grants about them. But is it just talk or do we act on some of our rhetoric? I have had some of my own questionable... Continue Reading →
On being an immigrant
On being an immigrant by Janice Nigro I have never been quite sure what exactly is the difference between an expat and an immigrant. My grandparents were Sicilian immigrants but I was a US expat when I was in Norway? One thing I can tell you is that I felt no different than anyone else... Continue Reading →
will you be here next week?
Will you be here next week? by Janice Nigro I suppose being a scientist all of my life and being trained ironically to adhere to the repetition of a so-called logical stepwise process (purpose, methods, results…repeat) has made me somewhat envious of more artistic types who can sit down and write a poetic sentence about... Continue Reading →