• Question: how much paperwork do you have on a daily basis compared to practical research?

    Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      It comes in batches. Some days, you will simply spent the whole time marking papers. Or filling out form. Sometimes the world will stop for a day because you are in the lab, no phone, no e-mails.

      On Monday, I had to fill in the forms to register for a lab in the USA where I am going next month. It took me the whole day! However yesterday was spent entirely (except for my time online with y’all) in the lab with my student.

      There is also the fact that, at a certain level, you need to ask for money to finance your own ideas. The process of writing experiment proposals and funding proposals is also very demanding but a very important part of your work.

      On average, I would say that I spend 15% on paperwork, and the rest on research (including time in the lab, but also writing papers, going to conferences, and simply stopping and thinking for a minute!)

    • Photo: Becky Martin

      Becky Martin answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Not too much really, I spend about an hour each day sorting out emails and documents that aren’t related to my research. I sometimes do some undergraduate student marking, but there’s a lot less boring admin-type stuff than a lot of jobs.

    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I try to keep paper work to a minimum, but it’s a pretty important part of the job. I have to do it to ask for money to do experiments, to get money back from travelling from somewhere and also when I want to work with radiation (since I have to apply for equipment to make sure I’m safe and that takes paperwork). These are just some examples, there are other occasions when I have to do paperwork, but I try not to think about it very often. I would say that normally I spend a couple of hours a week doing paperwork. But the longer I stay in research, the more I’ll have to do.

    • Photo: Daniel Roach

      Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Not too much… but it depends on what you call ‘paperwork’.

      I have a little bit of teaching-related admin to do (tests to mark, exam questions to write), and bits and pieces of money-tracking to take care of, but most of my indirect research activity (as opposed to sat at my computer, problem solving) is all about planning future research, writing grant applications and stuff like that.

      It’s all pretty interesting, though.

    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Depends what you call paper work. I’m currently working on a couple of papers but I wouldn’t call that paper work…

      We don’t have any undergrads in my department so there’s no marking or anything which would make up a large amount of paper work otherwise.

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