I am a very lucky person. As a chemistry professor at UNC–W, I do what I love. I love thinking about and doing organic chemistry, and I love teaching students how to think about and do organic chemistry. My job revolves around working with students, in lecture, lab, and research.

 

Preparing for class is one of the most time-consuming parts of my job. On days I have an 8 a.m. organic chemistry lecture, I start my morning at 6:30 a.m., going over my notes with my Cheerios. I often meet with students during office hours, and throughout the week, to try to help them understand the material better. I also put a lot of effort into writing problem sets, quizzes, exams, and labs, attempting not only to test students’ knowledge and challenge them, but to help them realize that there is always so much more to learn. Then there is the grading, most of which is done at home in the evenings or on weekends.

 

For both my undergraduate and graduate spectroscopy classes, I use the quiet of the weekends to run samples to generate a wide variety of spectra for use as examples of some fundamental point, or as problems for homework. I convert the spectra to an electronic format and post them on the class web site.

 

The most time-consuming, but also the most enjoyable aspect of my job is working with research students in my lab. I average three to six undergraduate and one to three graduate research students per semester. Each student works in the lab for anywhere between three hours to 40 hours per week, and I work with each student individually. When a student first starts in the lab, I work with her or him to design and set up reactions, purify and analyze the products, and decide where to go from there. As students gain more experience and confidence, I mainly help them analyze results and make decisions about the next step. When it comes time for students to write honors or master’s theses, I spend countless hours helping them organize their thoughts, prepare graphics, and write. With four to eight research students per semester in the lab, I am a busy bee.

 

With the exception of committee work, which averages a couple of hours per week, the rest of my time is spent thinking about, researching, and writing about my research. I spend hours searching the literature to design new synthetic routes and protocols for a new idea. Writing up those ideas for proposals or writing up the results for research papers usually comes after students have left for the day. Unfortunately, that means that my writing often takes a back seat to working with students, but that is a compromise that I make willingly. Between teaching, class preparation, course assessment, working with students, research, and service, my work week is usually about 55 hours.