A Day in the Life of an Animal Science Student – Georgie Smith, PhD student at University of Leeds


06:30 - The alarm goes off that I set last night when I had the best intentions of getting up early and doing a home workout… but I snooze the alarm, roll over, and get a bit more sleep instead.


07:30 - I actually get up and make a coffee to take back to bed with me which I drink while I read for 30 minutes (currently on Miranda Hart’s new autobiography – highly recommend – lots of good tips on being positive, confident and prioritising yourself (useful for a PhD student)). Get out of bed around 8am and get ready for work; my clothing very much reflecting the typical student aesthetic rather than a serious professional but alas that is the benefit of still technically being a student.


09:00-10:00 - I arrive on campus at a time dictated by the punctuality of the UK rail network (unreliable) and my ability to get out of bed quickly (even more unreliable). If I have a meeting scheduled or time sensitive lab work, I will of course ensure I arrive in plenty of time but the benefit of academia is you are largely free to make your own schedule (supervisor approval permitting) as long as you get the work done. It is a blessing among those of us who resent the traditional ‘9-5’ system that so many people in the real world have to contend with.
I start my day by logging onto my desktop and checking through emails. I respond to any immediately that require less than 5 minutes of my attention (e.g. sending dates and times to someone for a meeting), and any that require more time and effort go on my to-do list (e.g. my grant application with comments from my supervisor).
I then head down to the Café Nero (unfortunately situated 30 seconds away from my office) and spend a heinous amount of money on a very average coffee, justifying it by taking my own cup (earning me an extra stamp on my loyalty card) and using my 15% student discount.
 
Upon returning to the office, I inevitably burn my tongue on my coffee, and review my to-do list for the day (which I compile the day before) and prioritise my items based on the deadline for each. Items like “read more on poor gut development in gilt progeny” are vague and end up low priority, whereas “finalise abstract for BSAS conference – deadline in two days” are top of the list. I find prioritising by deadline the easiest way to ensure everything is done on time and allows me to make sure I have capacity to take on a new task before agreeing to it.

11:00 - When I’m not running an experiment I might have a build up of samples that need preparing for analysis so for a few hours a day I’ll be chugging away in the lab doing DNA extractions (basically lots of centrifuging) and/or gas chromatography prep (also just lots of centrifuging…). I like to mix and match my lab work with desk work to keep my day dynamic and avoid burning out at one task.
 
I usually ignore lunch breaks and eat at my desk (bad habit, would not recommend), but this is by no means because I enjoy working long hours without breaks, it’s because I like to condense my working day and leave earlier or start later instead of taking an hour in the middle (your milage may vary – do whatever suits your working style).

14:00 - After a few hours in the lab I come back to the office to get some computer work done. I have a range on my to-do list from reading papers to writing up methods to coding for my data analysis so, again, I tend to check any deadlines before starting. I have a presentation to do next month for our lab meeting where I need to discuss new data that I’ve yet to analyse so I open Mothur and RStudio before getting another coffee (this time just Aldi instant I keep in my drawer for emergencies – I’m not made of money).
It takes a couple of hours to battle with my badly annotated code and remember what on earth I’m doing before any usable content gets generated and then takes a further few hours once I’m in the zone to play around with my figures (keeping to my carefully curated colour scheme of pink and purple (it is relevant to my project, thank you very much, because piglets are pink)).

19:00 - I’ve accidentally stayed a lot longer than I planned to but I find if I’m in the zone and work is getting done it’s best to ride the motivation train while it’s running (lord knows self-motivating is one of the hardest skills to master). However, a late finish means I’ll take the hours back for myself at another point in the week and it’s pretty likely that I’ll hit the midday slump tomorrow and take a half day.


I gather my things to head home, checking first that the train I plan on getting is indeed running. Shocker, it’s delayed by 10 minutes, but that’s fine as I now have time to grab a little treat from the Sainsburys in the station on my way home.