"I have been here since 2:30 p.m. because I was too excited to wait at home," the woman told me on a Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. a few weeks ago.
Standing outside the Museum of Natural History on what may have possibly been the most humid, sticky afternoon of the summer, the 40-something New Yorker with a giant DSLR camera hanging from her neck bubbled over with the emotion of a tween girl at a Justin Bieber concert.
"I fucking love science!" she screamed as people trickled into a line that eventually grew to wrap around the building.
But this high school teacher — along with 900 other ticket-holders — wasn't lined up to see a rock star, catch a blockbuster flick or even meet Neil deGrasse Tyson. (We were at a museum, after all.) They were there to meet Elise Andrew, creator of the explosively popular "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook account.
With 6.8 million followers, Andrew wields an influence over the science and fans-of-science communities. However, Andrew, 24, isn't a scientist. She's actually kind of a fangirl herself.
"I don’t really understand why people are so interested in me, personally," she told me in the back of the theater before her panel. "I’m just a curator. I’m just telling people things I think are cool."
Andrew describes "I fucking love science" — IFLS for short (or for the tame) — as "the inside of her brain." The Facebook page, which she started in March 2012, includes posts of everything she's reading or finds interesting, from giant Peruvian centipedes and alien comics to a full download of great science discoveries of the week. In fact, she started the page simply as a place to keep track of all the cool things she found.
"I created the page and uploaded all the content I’d been posting to my personal profile, and then I went to bed. I woke up, and I had over 1,000 followers," she said.
Since then, the page has been growing at an average of 10,000 to 15,000 new followers per day, according to Andrew.
Andrew, who hails from Suffolk, England, graduated with a bachelor's degree in biology. In the traditional science world, a Ph.D. is a prerequisite to having a voice. The level of respect for that voice often depends on the amount of content published under your name.
People like Andrew, however, are turning this idea on its head.
That night at the Museum of Natural History, Andrew took the stage with a panel of guests: Annalee Newitz of io9, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, Emily Graslie of The Brain Scoop and Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown of AsapSCIENCE, none of whom were scientists in the traditional sense.
Rather, they are this new crop of influencers — science communicators.
"I’m such a generalist. I love everything," Andrew said. "If I had the opportunity, I think I would do about 10 different degrees, five different master’s degrees, probably as many Ph.D.s, and you can’t do that."
Don't mistake Andrew's ambition for indecisiveness. She speaks to a huge audience of adults with a general interest in science, but who bypassed the subject in primary school and college.
As a nation, we tend to push science education onto a younger generation — which is fantastic, don't get me wrong — but we leave out this group of adults who wants to "catch up," in a sense. Andrew has captured this demographic's attention. She makes science digestible — hell, she makes it fun, even for the layman.
"I want there to be something for everyone, and I’m told I get that right," Andrew tells me. "I speak to a lot of people who say, 'You know, I always hated science in school, and everybody got it. Your page is making that up to me. '"
Science professionals with higher degrees enjoy her content as well. Andrew is often invited to museums, science festivals and universities around the world.
"I'll speak to the scientists, who say, 'Oh yeah, I love your page. I’ve always loved it. It’s such a great way to keep up with all the things that are going on in different fields. It’s such a great way to learn things. I love the jokes… I love this,'" Andrew said.
Andrew, who also runs the PG "Science Is Awesome" page, admitted she's not sure whether she would include "fucking" in the name of the Facebook page if she could go back. But it's undoubtedly a huge part of the page's success. It's exciting, not stuffy. The "F" word is her brand — stop taking everything so fucking seriously, and maybe we'll all learn something new.
Thus, Andrew plans to stand up for the name, regardless of how big she gets — even if Facebook edits her page's URL. (The slug "IFeakingLoveScience" is not a misspelling on Andrew's part. It was Facebook's censorship.) The most she'll let slide is adding in an asterisk — but even then, she said, "you're still making the person say the word in their head."
"Yes, it means people will dislike you more, and I’ll probably get a hell of a lot more haters than a general page would," Andrew said. "But it also means that people who do follow it feel so much more connected to you. Because it is my personality. It is me. I think if you were to take some of that away, you would lost the passion that we get from people."
But the cool factor behind IFLS doesn't just lie in its name. If you've never read the page, Andrew's favorite post perfectly sums up the brand's tone:

"People in general romanticize nature, and they make it out to be something that it isn't because humans are so awful," she said. "And yes, we are absolutely screwing up this planet, but that is only because we have the capabilities to do so. Animals are not better than us. They are not nicer than us. Nature is fucking scary."
That's the great thing about science. No matter how much you disagree with or what you believe in, it's still fact. Andrew not only reminds us that science is awesome, but also that it's also kind of screwed up — and that's why we all fucking love it.
Image: Elise Andrew