A scientist's life is not always science

These past few weeks since the SAME14 conference I've tried to develop a new work schedule and adapt to that since me and my supervisor agreed that I need to get more laborative work done. This is the downside to weekly commuting to work. The upside is that when I'm actually at work I can fully focus on work and work alone and very often I work quite late. Sometimes because I have to but also because I find it so damn interesting that I must have those final few data points to eagerly start analyzing a, hopefully, coherent picture of my observations. The latter is usually not that simple, but you get my drift.

With that said I want to emphasize the point of this post, as the headline says, that even though I'm hired to learn and do professional science it is not the only thing I fill my workdays with. Far from it. There are many issues or matters that require my attention, not all of them related to science, but those that are might not actually be related to my project or even my subject.

This somewhat covers the never-ending story of the scientist with numerous "professional hats". The hat being a metaphor for a role, profession or title that I put on and take of when needed in my daily work with science. Because that is the reality of many professions I guess but I can only speak for scientists. It is a stressful prospect and not at all simple to deal with. Mainly it requires careful management of your time and work, but it also requires extensive knowledge and skills in areas where you were not necessarily previously trained or only have limited experience of.

Photo credit: Actuation Consulting

The list of requirements is long but the list of highly recommended skills is usually even longer. As a marine microbiologist working in the tropical open oceans, I'm naturally expected to be somewhat of an expert in my subject, quite knowledgeable in marine biology and a generalist in biology as a whole. However, knowled
ge wise it doesn't end there and the reason for that is that any one system that you might study is not limited to biology. There are numerous other factors that sustain, limit and shape biological life other than biology in itself. So to really begin to understand open ocean ecosystems I also need to be an oceanographer. I need to understand the role of currents, eddies and internal waves. I need to be a marine chemist. I need to understand the chemical composition of the waters that I study and be able to follow cycles of elements as well as realising the broader context of elements relevant to the phenomenon I observe. I need to be an ecologist. I need to understand the broader context of the observed phenomenon in the ecosystem as to identify and account for top-down and bottom-up effects.
The list can go on and this is just within the actual science that I'm studying. I also need to be a statistician. I need to analyse, prove and interpret the data from my observations using biostatistics.
I need to be an engineer and build my own experimental setups. I need to be a good writer and speaker to communicate my science and receive funding. I need to be an administrator that keeps track and logs my work for yearly revisions...etc...etc...

Finally I have to have a thirst for knowledge, which isn't a concern really, but to stay abreast with a rapidly improving and developing field I mainly need to read, read and read.

This week, and next, I'm attending an introductory course on research studies in biology. It partially covers the philosophy of science. What is science? Well for me, science in practice is obviously a broad concept, but that is also a deep philosophical question which people make careers on.
I will try and delve deeper into just that in my next blog post.