Research scientists help expand scientific knowledge by designing and running experiments. They also write up reports of the experiments. Most research scientists typically have a graduate degree and according to glassdoor.com they typically make between $79,000-209,000 a year. I interviewed Andrew Millward, a Research Scientist in Process R&D at Dow.
Myself: Could you describe what an average day of work looks like for you?
Millward: As a mid-career PhD Scientist at Dow, I have begun to spend less time in the lab, and more time managing and advising projects. Nearly without exception, when I land at my desk in the morning I spend an hour working through email. I sift quickly through those emails that are just informational (there will be construction work in this building on this date; somebody is giving a presentation on this subject at this date/time; here is a safety-gram to think on for the week; etc). Then I go back through to handle emails that will take just a few minutes of my time to effectively respond to. Last, I evaluate emails that will take more of my time to give a proper response to, and I head to my calendar. I review my day, and set blocks of time to work on certain projects (including responding to those longer emails), dodging the required meetings that are already on my calendar. Depending on how likely it is that I can preserve a longer segment of time (a couple hours or more) to be in the lab, vs how urgent the lab work is, I will push stuff to the next day to make some room in my day to make progress in the lab. It is less efficient to just go spend 15 or 45 minutes in the lab, but it’s also sometimes difficult to get a couple/few hours in a row to really go sink into the lab work and make it worth it.
Then I start chugging through my day! Each day tends to already have about 3 to 5 meetings on it: some 30 minutes, some 1 hr, rarely longer than that. I am usually running a few projects spread over a couple/few broad areas, and then I advise on another few projects that others are running where my skills/knowledge are needed.
Midday, if I was able to block out 90 minutes over lunch, I head over to the gym (racquetball is my sport). Gotta keep a healthy work-life balance, and burn off stress. I am also a family man, and so I try to preserve my evening hours for my family, and so I only go to the gym during lunch. If I wasn’t successful at blocking off gym time, then I just eat lunch for 5-10 minutes while I do desk/computer work. Sometimes I meet up with or go out to eat with a colleague, if we haven’t seen each other in a while and want to catch up.
Then I chug through my afternoon. After 4 decades of life, I know my mind and body pretty well, and I know that ~2:30 is my nap time. Of course, I don’t get to take a nap, but my body tries really hard to. So if I have a really boring meeting or boring desk work scheduled around 2:30, I’m in trouble (not allowed to nod off at work). And so I often purposefully do something away from my desk in the mid afternoon. Lastly, my mind really gets energized in the late afternoon, and I start getting really productive… right about when it’s time to go home. So I try to wrap up a thing or two that can be easily completed by day’s end, and then head home.
Comments