• Question: What other jobs have you had?

    Asked by bianca432 to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 21 Jun 2013:


      Toilet cleaner, postman, bin man,- the joys of student summer jobs!

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 22 Jun 2013:


      First job I ever had was selling shoes! Afterwards for years I couldn’t walk past a shoe store without straightening out that crooked pair…

      In the same year I also had a job selling watches, and another tutoring small kids (age 3-9) in maths, English and Chinese. A couple of years later I went back to my old secondary school and taught GCSE English and History for a few months, while the regular teachers were on maternity leave.

      Since I started university I’ve only had science-related jobs! Generally, my job would be to help people out in a lab, to do simple experiments for them or prepare materials they need. This has been amazing because I got to work in labs all over the world – I’ve worked in California, Hong Kong, Australia and Malaysia so far!

    • Photo: Ruth Mitchell

      Ruth Mitchell answered on 23 Jun 2013:


      Baby-sitting, healthcare assistant in nursing homes, audit assistant in a hospital (that was fun because I got to go to the hospital basement and pull out patient files and then walk all over the hospital to deliver the files to the doctors who wanted them).

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 25 Jun 2013:


      Barman, security guard, finance officer…quite a few.

      Before I did this I spent 3 years working with jellyfish- yes, I did get stung!

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 25 Jun 2013:


      Science jobs: Each of these was only for a summer but I’ve done:
      – Testing food samples from supermarkets for contamination with bacteria – this sounds interesting but my job was actually to weigh out 10g each of all the food samples then pass them along to the next person, sometimes for 8 hours! My only lasting skill from this is that if you ever need 10g of ham, I know what that looks like without weighing it!
      – Helping people in labs to access their stored samples – it’s possible to store little pieces of DNA in bacteria, then grow up more of the bacteria when more of that DNA is needed. I dug these bacteria out of the freezer and grew them for the other scientists.
      – Looking at the DNA of iguanas to see how their immune system works. I mostly did something called PCR, which is used to make lots of copies of a particular gene so you can look at it in detail.

      I’ve had loads of other jobs too – more interesting were feeding penguins and working at a summer camp in the US, less fun were delivering the post in an office, working in Tesco and Spar, waitressing, counting all the votes in an election, standing on a roundabout counting all the cars going past, working as a carer in an old peoples home and sorting the parcels at the post office!

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