My average days

Someone looking at whether to go industry or academia asked me what my schedule is like. The question came from a grad student figuring out which direction to go after graduation. I obviously (or maybe, not so obvious...I'm an enigma...) said to look at academia for the reasons I've discussed in this blog, but I thought I'd explain my average busy day, my average laid-back day, and my average travel schedule day. I'll throw in my most laid back and most busy days along with the relative percentages of the frequency of each type of day, too.

Very laid back day:  

9am Arrive

9-10am Emails

10am-11am Meeting

11am-1pm Lunch

1pm-3pm Work (experiments, design, etc)

3pm-5pm Email and read articles/patents/etc

5pm Leave and forget I even have a job

Laid back day

8am Arrive

8-9am Emails

9am-10am Experiments

10am-11am Meeting

11am-noon Brainstorming

Noon-1pm Lunch

1pm-4pm Work (experiments, design, etc)

4pm-5pm Email and read articles/patents/etc

5pm Leave while rarely thinking about work outside of work.

Busy day

7am Arrive

7am-8am Email

8am-9am Meeting

9am-10am Work on designs

10am-noon Experiments

Noon-1pm Look at data while eating

1pm-3pm Prototype changes and more experimentation

3pm-4pm Meeting

4pm-6pm Experiments and prototyping

6pm-7pm Emails

7pm Leave tired

Very busy day

6am Arrive

6am-7am Email

7am-8am Prepare materials for big meeting

8am-10am Big meeting

10am-11am Work on designs

11am-1pm Experiment while eating lunch

1pm-3pm Big meeting

3pm-5pm Experiments and prototyping

5pm-7pm International meeting

7pm-9pm Experiments to prepare for big show-and-tell

9pm-10pm Data processing

10pm-11pm Work on presentation

11pm-midnight Emails
midnight Sometimes leave while thinking about work...sometimes sleep in my office

Average day while traveling

5am-6am Check email during breakfast

6am Report to hospital

6am-8am Prepare equipment

8am-1pm Run animal study

1pm-2pm Lunch

2pm-7pm Run animal study

7pm-8pm Put equipment away

Do this 5 days in a row. 

My percentages are probably like so, on average:

2% VLBD

8% LBD

50% BD

10% VBD

30% Travel

Overall, I am very satisfied with my work, and it doesn't always seem like work since I'm having fun. The clinical-impact makes me feel great about the long days at the office, but I prefer VLBD :)

What the heck takes so long?

When I got my current industry position the timeline was roughly like so. Each offer I got was very slightly different, but the timing was similar.

Late Oct: Put together letter and resume. 

Early Nov: Applied to position.

Late Nov: Phone interview with recruiter.

Early Dec: Phone interview with hiring manager.

Mid Dec: Second phone interview with hiring manager's team.

Late Dec: On-site. 

Early Jan: Second on-site. 

Mid Jan: Offer.

Early Feb: Negotiated offer and acceptance.

Early Mar: Started. 

This process was a four person local and 2 person international team to decide hiring and needing the VP of R&D's permission.  They needed someone to do the job, they posted a specific position, and quickly filled it to get work done.  For my academic search, here's how quickly things have been shaping up for the position I'm furthest in on. 

Mid Sept: Started putting together materials

Mid Oct: Applied. 

Early Dec: Got request for phone interview. 

Early Jan: Phone interview. 

Now: Expressed interest in bringing me in for on-site. 

By now I had a written offer from industry after 3 phone interviews and 2 on-sites from the job I eventually accepted. What the heck takes academia so long? After the two schools that have said they'd like to bring me on campus told me so, I responded to the email with something like "Great! Please let me know which dates work best for you, as I have some international travel coming up to test some new devices."  I threw in the devices thing 1. Because it's true, and 2. Because I want to hammer in the point that they want someone with my experience.  This was a couple weeks ago.

The two schools that have said they are interested in bringing me out seem to be holding still.  So what could possibly be taking so long?  In industry, I got emails saying "unfortunately, we had to go with someone else", or "how does INSERT DATE HERE work for you?".  But no response since my response to their interest-emails.  Not even an email saying, "we will let you know more details as get closer to scheduling".  Bear in mind that they have already gone out of their way to say they want to bring me out.  I'm bewildered as to what's taking so long (although maybe ~2 weeks isn't that long?). Maybe I just operate on a much shorter time scale than most other people I know. I know if I took this long to get candidates together, short-list them, and bring them in I would be in deep trouble from my boss wondering what the heck is taking so long. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: 

I'll never understand how this process works.