• Question: In engineering is your job quite active (up and doing quite a lot) or more like sitting down all day?

    Asked by alicere to Alex, Claire, Kate, Marcus, Neil on 19 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Marcus Johns

      Marcus Johns answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Yes. I have a habit of falling asleep in front of my computer if I have to sit at it all day, so being active is really important for me. As a PhD student I have to go into labs a lot, and the same applies for engineers at a number of high-tech companies, such as those looking at developing new products.

      In more traditional engineering jobs the engineers still are quite active often having to carry out inspections of the factory – one friend once had to climb a chimney in order to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Other friends have gone to oil rigs in the North Sea or gone on field trips to areas round the factory to make sure that the factory wasn’t having a negative impact on the environment.

      Some days you will spend all day sitting in front of your desk, but that’s just part of the job.

    • Photo: Claire Brockett

      Claire Brockett answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Hi alicere,
      That depends on the job. There are days I spend all day on my feet – working in the lab, doing science workshops or lecturing, and there are days when I spend all the time in front of my computer – paper writing, reading articles, writing reports.
      I would say overall, I’ve got a 40-60 split for being active to sitting down, and it changes during the year. When our undergraduate students are here I stand up a lot more!

    • Photo: Kate Niehaus

      Kate Niehaus answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Currently, I spend the majority of my day at my computer. I don’t work in a wet-lab, so all of my experimental work is on the computer. I often have to cycle over to the hospital to meet with physicians (several times a week, usually), so that gets me up and about. And even if I’m just in my office for the day, lab is on the top of a hill, which is quite a cycle ride!

    • Photo: Alex Lyness

      Alex Lyness answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Hey alicere,

      My time is probably spent 50:50 up and down over a year. Some whole weeks are really active running experiments in the lab or workshop, or away at other companies, conferences or exhibitions. Other times you need to sit and concentrate and type up all that you have done into reports, unfortunately this means sitting in front of computer for days or a whole week.

      My desk is also really far away from the printer. So if I have to do a lot of drafts of a report I end up doing quite a bit of running back and forth to the printer. It’s good exercise! 🙂

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