My Job

A reader emailed me this morning and said that he had found my blog and although he enjoyed my site, he was disappointed to see that it talked very little about my life as a Biologist (he is getting his degree in Biology as well and wanted to know how I liked it...). This is the second time this has been mentioned....I guess people assume that if I am going to take the web name Bio Girl, I should mention Science once in a while. I have given this some thought and decided it is a fairly good point....in my defence it is kind of difficult to describe what I do and I just thought it might be a little dull for all you non-science people out there. Now that requests have been made, I will tell you about it (feel free to skim past this post if you don't care in the slightest what it is that I do)...then maybe I will even put a link to it over there on that trusty sidebar so that strangers can always find it and stop making me feel bad for not embracing my science roots!

So...to the point....I work for an environmental lab. I mainly do toxicology testing on water that companies are releasing into the environment. Basically we are making sure the water is safe for the water life in the streams and rivers. We work with two species in our testing... a fish and a water flea. I also do some Microbiological work for drinking water testing....making sure all you people out there are not drinking e. coli or what not... There are lots of other small tests we run, but those are the big ones. If anyone ever is dying to know the details of HOW we do this testing, I will be happy to share, but I am thinking this is good enough.

I am not an extreme environmentalist. I do recycle...but mainly because the city gives me a very convenient Rossie to keep it all in and it seems pretty wrong to just ignore it. Ecology and Environmental Science were not my favorite part of my Biology degree, and I am very surprised to have ended up in this field. The job fell in my lap and I jumped at the chance to begin working as a Biologist. Anybody with a general Science degree will tell you it is very difficult to get your foot in the door. Now that I am here, I really love what I do. I have always excelled in a laboratory environment so I guess this should not be surprising. Anyways...that is about it. My job in a nutshell...see, not really that exciting...I do love it though! (yes, I might just be a really big geek)