a day in the life of a research engineer

So I’ve been doing a decent job of building more social interactions into work to help my motivation. However when I get home, I’ve found that my motivation for writing is lacking. I think that building more interaction into blogging would help. I try commenting on blogs I read, though it’s hard to find the time sometimes. But I hope to step this up, and try engaging with some other bloggers more. Today I came across some bloggers doing this “show us your life” thing, so thought I’d join in!

So here it is, a day in the life of a research engineer ~

I wake up around 7 usually. I’m not much of a snooze button person, and actually I wake up before my alarm frequently. Is that weird? I figure out what to wear, get dressed, then usually make tea and oatmeal with peanut butter and a banana for breakfast. I eat while checking my Google reader, then brush my teeth, put on makeup, and pack my bags with lunch, gym clothes, and a book for the train. Then I walk a couple blocks over to the train. Luckily at this time in the morning it’s pretty consistent and I don’t have to wait long – even if I just miss a train. The train ride is about 30 minutes which I spend reading. The library is my friend and keeps me stocked with lots of reading material. I just finished reading “Brightest Star in the Sky” by one of my favorite authors, Marian Keyes – great for intelligent “chick lit”! Having a good book to look forward to really helps make the mornings more pleasant.

At work, most mornings I have a lab meeting (a lot of times this means rushing to make it on time at 8:30). These last about an hour and involve a lab member discussing their projects and asking for feedback, or maybe presenting a recent journal article that applies to their work and discussing it. Frequently after the meeting there’s a period of general chit chat before dragging ourselves back to our desks. Then I usually have some sort of editing work to do – revising papers written by lab members, or going through grants to be submitted, or maybe working on putting data into pretty graphs that can convey complex scientific ideas in a more easily understandable way.

Lunchtime: if I’m good I’ll go to the gym for yoga class, spinning class, or running on the treadmill. If it’s not a gym day, I either eat at my desk with food from home, or run out somewhere to grab something (Panera is a favorite).

After lunch: Depends on the day’s schedule. Sometimes it’s back to editing and other assorted research tasks, like the occasional reading of journal articles or heated debates with coworkers about statistics/Matlab functions/rugby teams/politics (ok so discussing rugby teams and politics are not technically research tasks, but they are inevitable if you work in a lab with people from lots of other countries!). Sometimes I have another meeting scheduled with my boss to go over specifics for grants or papers we’re working on. Or, if there’s an experiment I need to help with, then I’m in the lab. Generally this would involve helping with setup – placing electrodes on the subject’s skin over their arm muscles, wiring up the equipment, getting the computer program running. Lab time is fun because it’s pretty social, chatting with the subject and the other experimenters. I usually hang out during the experiment in case anything goes wrong, and help clean up afterwards. If you want to see a nerdy picture of me hooked up with electrodes and read a little more about the details of the science that happens in my lab, check out this post I wrote when I first started this blog.

After work, I sometimes have plans with a friend for dinner, or a meeting for the charity group I volunteer with. If not, I tend to ride the bus back and get home between 6-7, depending on whether I went to the gym at lunch. I’m usually hungry and tired so I eat something fairly quick (thus, my problems cooking!) and veg out for a while. Lately I’ve been watching The Office on Netflix almost every night. The best part of my day is the nightly phone conversations with Steve. A travel schedule where one spouse is gone 3-4 nights/week can be hard on a marriage, so we make sure to carve out time to chat about our days for about an hour every night. These conversations help us feel connected despite the distance. Then, usually I read for a bit and go to bed around 11.

So that’s about it ~ pretty standard, really. Hope that shared some insight into life as a research engineer! What does your day look like?