>Another listing that cracked me up was Mudlogging Geologist, especially when I read the description. They started out by calling it an "exciting opportunity!" and went on to say that you would be counting different types of mud. In Wyoming. Somebody hold me back!


Heh - one of our postdocs spent her entire PhD loading samples of brown dye into a UV spectrophotometer.

Three years, day in, day out, spent measuring out varying amounts of brown and loading it into the machine.

Understandably, she wanted to call her final thesis "Why I hate my life: an in-depth study", but was vetoed by her boss.

I've met a few of the Antartic Survey scientists (totally at random, in a pub in Cambridge) who sit for months taking daily air measurements in a thoroughly inhospitable environment. Apparently their pay scale, and the fact that they come home via a variety of holiday destinations, makes up for it.

There are a bunch of odd analytical jobs that involve regular sampling of some weird media - usually there's an interpretation angle, or some ancillary research work to go along with it that makes the job a lot less dull.

I'm always surprised by the high profile of forensic chemistry. It's possibly the dullest, and most difficult, area of analytical chemistry. Crime dramas have a lot to answer for...

Good luck with the job applications!

Bo"analytical chemistry = evil"urne