The Trip That Changed Me: How Antarctica Shattered Daniela Hernandez’s Sense of Self

What happens when a place is so vast, so remote, that it strips away the story you’ve been telling about yourself? For science journalist Daniela Hernandez, two reporting trips to Antarctica didn’t just expand her worldview — they dismantled it. Armed with a PhD in neuroscience from Columbia and years covering health and extreme environments for The Wall Street Journal and Wired, Daniela thought of herself as confident and self-reliant. But standing on the ice, surrounded by silence and scale, something shifted. “When I went to Antarctica, I thought of myself as this confident, self-reliant...