Question: Describe your "perfect day".

Alex Reid answered on 9 Nov 2018:

The best work day I could possibly imagine would be as follows. It would start with a really productive round of writing, a few really positive meetings with students and possibly some outreach (talking about science to schools). After these I would give a lecture so mind blowingly awesome students would cheer and line up to give me high-fives on my way out of the lecture theater. I would then manage to locate some chicken wings at the Roger Kirk canteen near my office for lunch which are really hard to come by because the university students tend to swarm through the canteen like locusts at lunch and eat them all. In the afternoon my boss, who is the Director of Teaching and Learning here at York, would swing by my office with a seal hand puppet he has called the ‘seal of approval’. He only gets this seal out for when people have done a really really good job, and I have never seen it (and am starting to take offense at this point). I never wanted to be in a position where my entire career is validated by a stuffed seal, but here we are.