A day in the life of someone who has left academia

Recently, the new PI asked what people outside academia do in a random work day. That random day is today, Monday, November 9th.

As you know, I left academia a bit over a year ago and I now work as an R&D scientist in a company. To keep it kind of vague because of trying to stay somewhat pseudonymous here, I’ll only disclose that my company makes stuff for patients and that we do preclinical and clinical studies on, to see if that stuff does something for the patients.

6:00 am: Husband wakes me up after a night in which Little Brother was up a couple times and husband took him to the living room around 5ish but let me sleep for a bit longer. I make breakfast while husband showers and then all four of us have breakfast together. Then I shower while husband makes lunch for himself, BlueEyes, and me (Little Brother gets lunch at daycare) and around 7:15 am, Little Brother and I leave the house to cycle to daycare and work (husband brings BlueEyes to school which only starts at 8:30).

8:00 am: I arrive at work after dropping Little Brother off at daycare. I search for a spot in our open office, chat with colleagues, and read my emails. I had already opened my email Sunday evening to see how much I could expect but now take the time to properly read them and respond. Then it’s coffee with colleagues.

9:00 am: We are working on a big grant (yup, EU likes to fund public-private partnerships, so lots of grant writing still even outside academia), and I’m trying to decide what I can do before we have a meeting about this grant that I am chairing. I also need to prep for this meeting.

9:15 am: Unexpected fire drill. We all leave the building and go to the meeting spot outside. I chat with a colleague I had never met about what kind of work she does, which is interesting. Then I chat with our preclinical manager about an experiment I’m planning with a CRO and what I need to do for that. So, not entirely wasted, this fire drill time.

10:00 am: Meeting about the grant. Writing the grant precipitated some decisions about what direction to go, which still needs to be aligned with the marketing and regulation people. This kind of stuff really distracts from the actual writing, which also needs to happen. Also, we have not yet heard from everyone in the consortium yet, even though we plan to have a first draft ready by the end of the week. Yikes, stressful.

11:00 am: Coffee with my managers who couldn’t attend the meeting about the grant to update them. Again, more about the larger decisions and why we had not made those earlier than about the grant.

11:30 am: Back at my desk staring at the grant. Typed a little section, tried to call one of the consortium members but left a message on their voicemail.

12:00: Lunch with colleagues. Chatting about a conference someone had just been to and what they had seen there. Joking about how close the field is to a cure (not!).

12:30: Back at my desk, more emails (about the experiment with the CRO), and prepping for a group of MSc students that are coming to visit the company later in the day.

1:00 pm: Some more grant writing. Okay and some procrastination on Twitter. And some panic about whether or not the experiment with the CRO is going to happen. The money needs to come from this year’s budget so if I can’t make it happen before the end of the year it won’t happen at all.

2:00 pm: Give a talk to the students together with another colleague about what our company does, how we got these jobs, and what kind of work we do now. It’s a really nice and interactive group of students who ask a ton of question. Then we give them a tour around our (new and pretty amazing-looking) building.

4:00 pm: The students have just left and I briefly chat with a colleague. Then I look at the grant and try to figure out what I can still do while tired from the students visiting. I write a short boring section that still needed to be done.

4:45 pm: I check the weather forecast (rain for the next hour) and leave to pick Little Brother up from daycare. I am lucky today that husband worked from home and picked up BlueEyes, because normally I cycle first to the daycare (that is close to work), and then to the after school care (that is close to home) and then home. Husband has also already cooked so we eat together at 6:00 pm.

6:45 pm: We start the whole bath, toothbrush, and read-a-story routine that lasts until 7:30 pm (which is a good day).

7:30 pm: Answer a couple emails, write this blog post, and then it’s time to watch Walking Dead with the husband (only at season 2, so no spoilers please!).

The author of this story is a bioinformatics post-doc and a single mom by choice. This story was published on November 9, 2015, on the Scientopia blog, In Baby Attach Mode (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.