AsianScientist (Jun. 5, 2017) – Two significant things happened to me this past weekend. The first was that I woke up on Saturday morning from a panicked dream where I’d forgotten to turn off my precious (and expensive!) new machine. This resulted in a furious drive to work to see if my dreams were prophetic or if I was actually paranoid (I’m psychic!!!). But, hey, since I was at work, I decided to take the opportunity to set up some analysis!
The second thing was that work decided to issue me with a new laptop and when I when logged in on Sunday to check that analysis, I discovered that IT hadn’t loaded the software I needed to view the analysis and I didn’t have the admin rights to do it myself. Come Monday, a colleague asked me how my weekend had been, and while I knew it was supposed to be a polite small talk conversation, I let fly on being at work and not being able to do work.
The colleague looked at me with a bit of pity and said, “I’d tell you to get a life, except that I know you have a life outside of work!”
And that’s how we get to this month’s topic: while we know the types of scientists inside of work, who are we outside of it?
- The Superfan
- The Fitness Freak
- The Family Person
- The Mr Hyde
- The Mystery
- The “What do you mean by outside of the lab?”
People who are outside of science probably think this is what we’re like when we’re not in the lab. Superfans spend their time being obsessed with as particular topic. Maybe it’s music or a specific sport, but usually it’s a game. Computer games, board games, card games, or even meeting up with others to do live role-play games, mark my words, if there isn’t one Superfan in your lab, there’s definitely three in your department.
For these people, when the lab coat comes off, the gym clothes come on! Or maybe it’s the bicycle that comes out, or the rock climbing chalk bag is clipped on, or some other sporting outfit. I think we all know at least one of these people and I say at least one because they usually occur in packs, and on the few occasions that there might be one on their own in your department, don’t you fear—some latent Fitness Freak will raise their head! And you’ll know it because they’ll sit around talking about how they finally broke a personal barrier like swimming 1 km in 15 minutes or asking who wants to sign up and train for that half marathon in two months.
While The Fitness Freaks are turning themselves into a marvel of human biology, The Family Person is a marvel of human biology. After spending an entire day at work, they’ll go home, pick up the kids, clean, bathe, and feed them, then cook and host a dinner party for six! All while needing to write grants! The Family Person comes in two types: those who genuinely enjoy spending their weekends doing home improvements between reading papers, or those who clutch at work social activities as a legitimate reason to get out and about.
Now I’m not saying that this person turns into a violent homicidal maniac once they stop being a mild-mannered scientist, but you do know that they transform into a completely different person once they step out of the lab. There are little signs here and there; maybe you’ve caught them transforming themselves with a full face of make up on their way out to (what clearly looks like) a glamorous event. Perhaps you’ve seen them looking a bit ragged after a weekend with ‘old school friends’. But you know that they’re definitely the person who get the ‘you’re a scientist?!?!’ comment all the time.
You see this person arrive and leave daily, but you’ve got literally no idea what this person does when they’re not in the lab. They never mention whatever it is they do when they’re not at work, there are no photos of family or friends over their desk, no indications of non-science related interests and no social media presence so you can’t even stalk them to find out! Logic dictates that they must have some sort of outside life, but when asked how their vacations were, you’ll receive a perfunctory, “Yeah, it was fine” as a reply. Huh.
While you know that The Mystery has a life outside of lab, even if you’ve got no idea what it is, that’s in contrast to this person who only ever seems to be in the lab. You’re leaving late? They’re there. You come in on the weekend? When human resources manages to force them to take their mandated annual leave, they ‘take’ it by saying they’re on leave but still come in anyway. So, yeah, apparently this is me… if I weren’t also someone else…
This article is from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff
