• Question: How long are your days? Do you get much free time?

    Asked by Katherine to Angeline, Catherine, Luke, Philip, Shona on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Catherine Vlahakis

      Catherine Vlahakis answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      My job as an astronomer doesn’t really have fixed hours – it’s not a 9-5 office job. So it can mean working really long hours, or working from home on the evenings and weekends. But you can usually choose when to do the work, so when you want to take some time off you can, it’s up to you.

      If you really want free time, though, it’s best to turn off your email 😉

    • Photo: Angeline Burrell

      Angeline Burrell answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      It depends on how much I have going on. In the US I tended to work 9-13 hours a day but now I tend to work 7-10 hours a day.

    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      It depends — no two days are the same (which is one of the great things about my job). The longest period of continuous work I had was a 40 hour shift (while working at a synchrotron — see http://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/About/How-Diamond-Works.html for an explanation of what a synchrotron is/does). This is not entirely typical and it’s not at all recommended as a healthy way to work. It was the last two weeks of my PhD research, however, and I needed the data!

      When I started as a lecturer I worked about an 80 hour week. This is not untypical of scientists who are new to a career as a university lecturer. However, when the kids arrived that time of course reduced quite a bit. I’d estimate that I do a ten hour day on average during the week (including work at home after my children go to bed (or, more often, before they get up!)).

    • Photo: Shona Whittam

      Shona Whittam answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I work 9am-5.30pm with an hour for lunch.

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