time reversal

There seems to be a giant discrepancy in hours in lab between those who have wives/girlfriends, and those who are single. The otherwise committed ones mostly seem to work normal hours. Now obviously they work longer hours when it’s really crunch time, and sometimes they do analysis at home, but mostly they keep to a normal schedule. Then there are the single ones–they never seem to go home. But I have a theory about this.

Let’s take last night for example. It’s 7pm on a Friday night, and I’m finishing up analyzing some data with one other dude. He says, “You don’t have to finish that tonight if you want to get out of here.” At first I think, great, I’m out of here. But then I realize that if I leave I’m just going to go home, cook some food, maybe read a book, and go to bed. There wasn’t really any reason for me to go home. Also, it’s not like I had social plans tying me up–I don’t really know anyone here yet except my lab mates, and I wasn’t going to hit the rock gym because I’d pumped myself out there the day before. So I stuck around and finished up analyzing data, for lack of anything better to do. The other guy went home a little after I did, but he sent out more numbers around midnight, which meant he just kept working after he went home.

I’m starting to think that part of the reason some students work such long hours is for lack of anything better to do. Now don’t get me wrong–there are of course deadlines, and experiments are hard. But the difference in working hours between the single and not-single students is striking. It seems like if there isn’t anyone to go home to, why go home? So next time I find myself in lab on Friday evening with a few other people, I’m chopping the internet cord and dragging everyone out to the pub. That’s something better to do!

On a different note (sort of): I’m working with two groups of people–one is full of morning people and one is full of night people. The morning people want to start at 9am, and the night people stick around until 11pm or later. This has resulted in a few very long days for me. But I figured out how to fix it! I ditch work around 2pm, go rock climbing for a few hours, and then come back. It works great. Except for the whole lack of sleep thing. But that’s nothing new. I’d rather go climbing than sleep anyway.

Anyway, life is good! I joined the climbing gym (which you might have guessed by now), and I get to play with really shiny things at work. The detectors we make for the telescope have 3 layers of gold deposition on them, including one layer referred to as “bling.” The bling is just a bunch of really thick gold that we put on the surface of the detectors to increase the heat capacity of the bolometers. It used to be deposited in a ring shape (now it’s a waffle), so it was essentially a big gratuitous gold ring. Hence, “bling.” But like I said, lots of gold. It’s really shiny (Ruth you should see it!).

Tags:   bling · climbing · lab · shinyNo Comments