Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Juggling, aka multitasking


There was a dark time in my life, after undergrad and before I got a job as a wildlife biologist (which was before grad school) when I took any job I could get in order to eat. Being the bright youngster that I was I figured if I needed to eat, might as well get a job in a restaurant. So I bluffed my way into a job as a cook at a 24 hour diner. There were many, many, things about this job that sucked. But, I got really good at juggling a lot of things at once. Not real juggling mine you, but multitasking. I worked the drunk shift (weekend nights 10pm- 6am) and it was a very popular diner so from the moment I got there until around 4:30am we were slammed. As the cook I had to make ALL of the food for the place and that meant simultaneously preparing hamburgers, eggs Benedict, enchiladas, pasta, fajitas, pancakes, etc. These things all take different skills and different amount of time to prepare. To do the job right I had to keep a lot of different things in my head and switch back and forth rapidly.
What the heck does this have to do with being a biologist you ask? Well, the pace of the work is, usually, a little slower. But, I am still constantly switching between assignments, and these switches normally involve not only switching subjects, but also switching skill sets. I'm endlessly switching from data entry, to statistics, to writing a paper on a study I finished 4 years ago to brainstorming about what study I want to do in 2 years (or 10), to preparing a presentation, to writing a blog entry about the adventure along the way. I am naturally a multitasker, which helps. But, I can't help but think my time as a diner cook helped.