So, when not blogging, what does a microscopist do all day?

A recent question (What does a microscopist do all day?”) on the microscopy list server has generated a philosophic spark with me:

One off-the-cuff remark was we battle with administrators who are gorged
with cash while we scrap by on a starvation diet of pennies. There is more
than a whisper of truth to this. I know of one microscopist who needs to
up date his SEM operating system from Windows 95 to something more modern. The update, while seeming high as compared to her salary, is chump change to her employer, an international company with operations on just about every earthly continent. (I understand they want to mine Jupiter for oil.)

The obvious answer is we do microscopy all day. I subscribe to the
unpopular motion that even doing the paperwork needed to issue a report or order more microscope slides is microscopy. Why? Well, the company hired me to do microscopy and part of that job contains other non-microscopy functions. The pays the same whether I order glassware, change pump oil or determine the optical sign of a mineral fragment.

Others see their job in remarkable sharp focus. If they aren’t taking
microphotographs, cutting thin sectioning and staining tissue or saturating a filament, they aren’t doing microscopy. It’s an oil immersion view (very
narrow and with little depth) and they are often unhappy about their job
when they are forced to do an extraction, mix a stain or enter problems in
to the daily log.

As for me I send most of my day at the computer: I check my e-mail to stay in touch with my clients and co-workers. I process data in Excel and my
reports contain elements of Word and Powerpoint. That the less desirable
part. A lot of good time is spent photographing carbon black, running the
SEM/EDS and working with PLM.

A pundit once described work as “The disagreeable things we do daily in
order to do the agreeable things in life.” She may be right.

What do you
think?