• Question: How much free time do you have outside of your job

    Asked by 665nepk48 to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      My job hours are very flexible. This is a good and bad thing. I do my job because I like it, so this means sometimes I will work long hours to get an experiment done. It’s really easy for me to get carried away and work too late on something, which is something I’ve had to improve about myself throughout my phd. There is no end to research!

      You could do my work in a 9am-5pm work schedule, and many of my work colleagues do. Despite sometimes overworking, I still have free time to go roller skating!

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      My answer would be basically the same as Kerrianne’s, only without the rollerskating! I get much more free time now than I did when I was a teacher, and it’s so much more fun to watch tv or go out for dinner than to mark books or plan lessons…

    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      Work time is pretty flexible – it could be 8-4, 9-5, or even 10-6 work. My team tends not to try to overwork or put unreasonable pressure to work long hours. That said, I live about an hour away from where I work because Cambridge is really expensive to own or rent a house – so I spend a couple of hours commuting every day. That kinda sucks, but it means I can afford a nicer house.

      My evenings are mostly my own – I get home from work around 7pm, eat tea, then do things to relax or work on my side projects. I also volunteer a bit – I’m a code instructor at Codefirst:Girls http://www.codefirstgirls.org.uk/ and I recently got trained up to walk dogs at the RSPCA.

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Same as Kerrianne and Oli, it’s reasonably flexible. Most scientists tend to work long hours because they’re very self motivated. I tend to work 9-7 most days Monday to Friday, and used to work more during my PhD. Sometimes the experiments I do take all day and I can’t just leave them. Last month was particularly tiring because I worked three weekends in a row. I didn’t necessarily have to, I just wanted to know the answers to a long experiment I was running! My boss is pretty OK with me being flexible as long as the work gets done and the data lands on his desk regularly!

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