• Question: How many hours do you work a day and per week?

    Asked by G-Lucz to Alison, Hannah, Jonny, MarthaNari, Paul on 13 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Cat, Sophie-May-0615.
    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      I pretty much work 9-5.30 most days, so about 45 hours a week. Sometimes I do some work in the evenings too, but I try to keep it to a minimum.

    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      I start at 10am most days and work until 6pm. If I have a lot on, I will work extra in the evenings or on weekends. It’s good to try and keep a work/life balance though, as you end up becoming less productive per hour if you are very tired.

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      Right now I work about 45 hours/week. That seems to be easier to do in the Netherlands though. Before this job I used to work longer hours (50-60). Partially, long hours are down to what kinds of experiments you do – you may really need the time. But partially it’s also just being used to working long hours, which doesn’t even necessarily mean you get more done, just that everyone kind of does it so you get used to it.

    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      My work day varies A LOT! Because I get involved in lots of science communication and extra curricular activities I don’t really have a set work routine.
      My supervisor is very understanding and she doesn’t mind what I do, as long as the work gets done.

      So some days I’ll do no work at all and some days I might work for up to 14 hours. This can be weekdays and/or weekends
      I would say that over the course of the work I’ll work around about 40 hours on my research and extra if you add the science communication work that I do.

    • Photo: Hannah Greenwood

      Hannah Greenwood answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      It completely varies day to day, week to week. I work on a clinical trial which involves taking blood from pneumonia patients within 24 hours of hospital admission. It then takes about 7 hours to complete all my experiments of each sample so if a patient gets admitted at 2pm for example then I’ll be working until about 9pm to get everything done. Sometimes there are lots of patients admitted (usually in winter, pneumonia is a seasonal disease) so lots of 12 hour days other times there are no admissions so I can work shorter days.

Comments