A day in the life…

of a semi-employed physicist.

6:40 am – Wake up, locate glasses and laptop, check email from bed. No job offers have appeared overnight.

7:20 am – Head downstairs to make tea, start process of becoming less human. Watch BBC news, wonder about the standard of science reporting on TV.

8:00 am – Head to work

9:00 am – Get to office to discover I was beaten in by PhD student. Get coffee from the machine because it is less vile than the tea. Check email, usenet, blogs, webcomics.

10:00 am – Head into the workshop to finish building a 40 dB power tap for the logarithmic amp. Get as far as drilling four holes and fitting two connectors before I realise the rest of the parts have still not arrived.

10:45 am – More coffee.

10:50 am – Console PhD student that has just found out a vacuum flange she ordered six months ago (and which has finally arrived) is useless. It is a custom made part and can’t be sent back. Try and find someone that might be able to make it work for her.

11:23 am – Stuck waiting on an email from the HOD in reply to a proposed project. PhD student finds a way to work around the problem – just need someone that can produce vacuum compatible welds.

11:40 am – Email arrives from Elsevier Author Services containing the offprint of my latest paper. Yay! Still no word or sign of HOD.

11:46 am – Pondering lunch.

12:30 pm – Lunch at desk. Have located parts to finish building the 40 dB power tap.

12:53 pm – Every soldering iron the dept appears to be dead except a stonking great 500 watt job – you could solder up whiskey stills with this…

13:32 pm – Set up printer for PhD student.

13:47 pm – Get email from old PhD supervisor promising some samples to play with.

14:57 pm – Power tap is finished.

16:40 pm – Head home, pass up chance to perhaps, maybe, see the Elephant Man’s skeleton (not much chance of seeing it anyway)

18:00 pm – Home. Do stuff. Working day at an end (well apart from some writing and some code for another project)