• Question: What do you do while you're working

    Asked by CustardCream to Lauren, Marisol, Michael, Sarah, Sophie on 4 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Sophie Nedelec

      Sophie Nedelec answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      All sorts of things.. work wise at the moment I am trying to find out about all the animals that live in Britain so I am reading a lot of books and scientific papers and making a giant spreadsheet in excel. While I’m doing that I like to drink tea, eat chocolate bars and fruit and listen to music to keep me motivated. When I have a break I like to chat to my friends, yesterday lunchtime I went to the climbing wall with some friends. I have to admit sometimes I get distracted and I look at the birds flying past the window and the windmills turning and try to imagine what research project I’m going to do next.

    • Photo: Lauren Burt

      Lauren Burt answered on 6 Nov 2016:

      Hi @Clobelle

      So, my day usually starts with checking my emails- to make sure I don’t miss out on anything!
      If I’m out of the office doing fieldwork, then we go to the beach and collect information about the beach and see if it has been damaged by a storm or not. We usually cant tell when we are at the beach, so we take the information back to the office where we can compare it to other information, and see if there has been any change. We do this on a computer and there are lots of tools to help us spot where there has been any damage.

      So my working day is often a mix of different things. We visit lots of different beaches through the year, so every day we are looking at something new!

      Lauren 😀

    • Photo: Marisol Collins

      Marisol Collins answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      I do lots of different things when I am working @Clobelle! If I am working in the clinic as a vet, this will mean seeing clients and their pets in the morning, including running tests on samples from them to see what illness a pet may have. I will then do some operations on pets that need surgery, or perhaps take some X-rays or do an ultrasound scan. If it is a day where I am in the lab, I may be testing dog poo samples for parasites, or writing up the results of the tests on the computer (with a cup of tea – after washing my hands of course!).

    • Photo: Sarah Hunak

      Sarah Hunak answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Drink lots of coffee usually! A lot of my work requires a lot of thinking, so I need my coffee (and maybe a biscuit or two) to keep my brain working. I’m usually in the office, working on calculations, but often get to go on site to see the things I’m calculating in real life. Of course, when that’s a trip to Italy in the summer rather than Hartlepool in winter, my enthusiasm to leave my cosy office changes!

    • Photo: Michael Rivera

      Michael Rivera answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Most of the time, I read and write. However, the most exciting part of my job is getting to examine the skeletons first-hand, with the bones right in front of me. I use all sorts of rulers to measure them, and I use a laser scanner to create 3D pictures of the bones on my computer. This is really exciting!

      Often, I have some music or radio playing in my earphones while I work. Sometimes, I might turn around to chat with my lab mates about how their research is going. Science is a team effort after all!

      Michael 🙂

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