Thursday, June 14, 2012

I Love My Job

So, for those of you that do not know, I am a lab/research technologist in an entomology lab.  Mostly I supervise the undergrads, make sure people get paid, offer advice, stock the inventory, help on projects when the loads are tough, and work on my own projects at the same time (It can be exhausting).

Occasionally I get really cool/fun opportunities as an entomologist and this week included one of them.  The post doc in my lab wanted to go out and catch leaf hoppers and tree hoppers for a project we are collaborating on and I got to go with her!  Now I know this does not sound all that great, but it was awesome.  I felt like such a little kid.  I was basically running through grass with a butterfly net and catching everything.  I got to see so many different kinds of insects (and spiders) and it was neat to see how many leaf hoppers I could get.  I ended up catching eight different morphotypes (they looked the same to the naked eye, but they might technically be a different species).

Here are my leaf hopper/tree hopper catches!







What About You?  Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by a task you were assigned at work and thought it was a ton of fun?  What was it?

3 comments:

  1. I worked for a while in the entomology dept at Washington State University. I'm not a bug lover, but I sure love the university atmosphere!!

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  2. That sounds like fun :) The only thing I can think of that I was somewhat surprised by is that I enjoy editing the technical sections of proposals. It's surprisingly creatively challenging.

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  3. I don't know if anything I've been assigned at my job has been really interesting or unexpectedly so, but, I will say that whatever I do it's my co-workers that make me love work.

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