What do we all do for a living?
- Thread starter sparky05084
- Start date
I'd rather eat my own head
Why's that?
I find that lab reduced some of the world's most exciting and interesting ideas into repetitive monotony, with no more creativity or skill involved than following a cooking recipe, baking a cake for 3 months only to find it didn't work ("just because") and having to start all over again. It's immensely frustrating.
The ideas fuelling research are interesting, as are analysing the results. Working in a lab however is the opposite of interesting, from my experience. Dull, isolating and monotonous.
Ah, well that doesn't bode well for my career aims!
What field of research were you in?
Soldato
Just starting out in a Mechanical Design Engineer position for a company that manufactures superconducting electromagnets and major parts for use in MRI scanning and therapy machines. Been working there for 1 month.
It's challenging me in all kinds of ways, and going from a position which I held for 10.5 years where I was the company oracle on many products and techniques, to one where I know very little, is quite hard sometimes.
It's challenging me in all kinds of ways, and going from a position which I held for 10.5 years where I was the company oracle on many products and techniques, to one where I know very little, is quite hard sometimes.
I wasn't really in any, not to any great extent. I studied biology and spent a rather large amount of time in my final year in the lab (3-4 hours a day, which trust me, is more than enough for me). I worked with a team who studied Arabidopsis, mostly expressing prostaglandins using genetic engineering. For my project, we isolated a prostaglandin gene from P. falciparum (which causes malaria) and transformed it into bacterial and yeast vectors and finally into Arabidopsis. The idea was that the isolate in question could be used to treat glaucoma, the disease of the eye, and that this would be cheaper to produce than pharmaceuticals from mammalian cell cultures.
Sounds cool right? Well, I think it does.
In reality though it was a nightmarish chore. Preparing endless cell agar plates, using the autoclave, cutting and isolating DNA, PCR, a thousand stupid mixtures with silly restriction enzymes... all of which frequently never worked and had to be repeated. It was beyond dire, particularly as you did most of this yourself and had little interaction. Every PhD student I've met seems to have such wildly fluctuating morale - I believe they get excited by the big ideas and then bogged down by the actual research.
So yes, big ideas are fascinating, monotonous work is not. Horses for courses but I personally thought I was above doing such lonely, painfully slow work for peanuts - I honestly believe anyone with the patience could do the job. It's just not for me.
Do not want!
Caporegime
All of which makes the Big Bang Theory more funny lol
Haha... I was expecting you to mock me for wishing to avoid boring and monotonous work with my future career path in mind...
Associate
Mobile telecoms including transmission (fault finding/fix/operations and maintenance), bit of a jack of all trades, have done satcom, radio, fixed line, commissioning, installation etc, been doing telecoms since I was about 17.
Man of Honour
Royal Air Force, communications trade.
-_-
Communications. My trade is computers/radios/satellites/radar etc!
There's quite a few on this forum, even newbie ones like Zefan
-_-
![[FnG]magnolia](/styles/overclockers/avatars/9.png){kind=avatar}
Caporegime
It wouldn't astonish me to discover that I know you or have at least put some mouth words in your direction, maybe five or six. Are you a contrary fellow, prone to issues of the mind and so forth?
Soldato
Was an electrician for 7 years now moved on to cathodic protection technician
like sparkying just easier and pays more
like sparkying just easier and pays more
Permabanned
Second year maths degree student.
Also part time cashier at Ladbrokes.
And full time party animal.
I'm not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to meetings. I'm a drunk, we go to parties!
Also part time cashier at Ladbrokes.
And full time party animal.
I'm not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to meetings. I'm a drunk, we go to parties!
Associate
- Joined
- 22 Jan 2008
- Posts
- 2,218
Ok I'll start (obviously)
I'm an electrician working for a local housing association. Very happy with my career choice and get a great deal of satisfaction from it.
Sorry a bit off topic, but what route did you take into becoming an electrician. I'm interested in going into this field but my local college is charging a bomb to get the certificate.