Profile

I’m a mum of a clever and beautiful little 8 month old girl, have 2 cats, a husband and live in a lovely house at the top of a cliff. In addition to being a lab technician I also run my own part time business selling postage stamps. When I’m not working on my business, I love pottering about in my greenhouse with my plants (it’s very, very windy here so it’s tied down with steel rope). I also love baking, especially making chocolate brownies. At the moment I’m on maternity leave which means I can spend lots of time at home with my little one teaching her all about the ways of the world.

I’m a research lab technician which means that I work with a specific research group at a university and help them out in all things lab related. I work with a group which looks at how plants, particularly their roots, can change the soil around them. When plants grow in soil, their roots push soil around, squeeze though tiny spaces in the soil and they also, essentially produce lots of different types of snot from their roots too. This ‘snot’ or what we call ‘exudates’ to give it a more polite term, can cause soil to behave in different ways. Some are sticky and cause soil to stick or clump together and some are more runny and can make it easier for roots to slide through the soil. We make up artificial (or fake) ‘snots’ and add these to soil and see what happens when we prod and poke them with various instruments. We even use high powered x-ray machines to see inside the soil, just like they do for seeing inside you. By doing this we can understand how roots can change soil and what things they use to do it. This is important because it can help save our precious soils which are under threat from humans treating them badly.

In a day I could do any number of things, but here’s an example of the kind of things I could get up to. On arriving at my office at 8am, the first thing I always do is write my to-do list. I have so many different things to do that this is essential. I will check what meetings I have and add these on. 8am-9am is also a great time to have some focus because the students aren’t out of their bed yet. I can get 10 times as many things done in this time than in the rest of the day! I’ll get lots of little admin tasks done. In the morning I could be meeting a student to run through an instrument and how to use it. We’ll go through the risks and how to use it correctly and safely. Quite often during this time I’ll have lots of people come in to ask me questions too. At 11am its tools down and we head off for an all important cup of tea. It’s a great opportunity to catch up with the lecturers and professors and also to socialise with students and other technicians. Plus, there’s usually cake! I’ll then head back to the office to update some risk assessments and do other paperwork. We’ll discuss upcoming experiments and problem solve issues around the office too. Once a month just before lunch we have ‘Tech Talks’. These are talks which I arrange so that technicians can get together and chat about important things like what to do if we have a chemical spill or how to improve how we get rid of our waste. Lunch is a great time to escape and get some fresh air. Sometimes I’ll eat it in the office if I’m busy but this is generally a bad idea – all our deliveries tend to arrive around lunch so you don’t get what you need to get done anyway! In the afternoon I might spend a few hours fixing and setting up a bit of equipment. I’ll also spend a while reading and checking emails, arranging meetings and chasing people up. Once it’s 4pm its home time!

And sometimes we all have fun! – ->