What was/is your job while at university?

[Greg Bernhardt]

I worked in my program's computer lab doing tech support and general maintenance. Worked 6 months revamping the programs internal website/email system and then my boss left and the new guy canned my project.

 

[Psinter]

Software developer on paid projects for different professors. Though I had no title of anything at that moment. Also fixing computers for some other professors, but that had nothing to do with university. They just wanted me to fix their computers.

I don't understand the expression: "the new guy canned my project." Canned is like, put in a can to preserve?

 

[BillTre]

When I was an undergrad, I worked over summers on NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency) ships (made good money) and just studied at school.
Graduate School: teaching aid and doing research (biology).

 

[jtbell]

Canned is like, put in a can to preserve?

No, in this idiom, it's like, put it in a trash can.

 

[Charles Link]

In Champaign-Urbana, (University of Illinois), I worked in the summer as a janitor and night watchman at a park for the Champaign Park District. At 2:00 A.M., I was often hosing down the deck (concrete) of the swimming pool for use the next day. I also had to pick up trash that wasn't thrown into the containers, and had cleaning chores in one of the buildings.

 

[fresh_42]

I drove a forklift as a vacation substitute. It had also a street permission. Did you ever drive to a gas station in a forklift? That was fun!

 

[Psinter]

No, in this idiom, it's like, put it in a trash can.

Aha. Now I get it. .

 

[Lisa!]

I worked at a university for some time but I wasn't a student at that time, does that count?

 

[Grands]

It is so common for US student to work while studying at university ?

 

[gmax137]

During the school year i washed dishes in the school kitchens. Summers were fast-food cook or construction labor ( "throw all the scrap into the dump truck", "move that hole over there", "jackhammer this concrete so the plumbers can put in the pipe they forgot"...

 

[Dr Transport]

I had two jobs, one was as a substitute janitor for a school system and during the summer I ran the paint crew for that system. I also was in the army reserves...

 

[StatGuy2000]

I worked as a system administrator for the statistics department's computer labs (and summer jobs doing software internships and banks) during my undergrad years. During grad school, I worked as a TA.

 

[phinds]

On my Co-Op quarters, I worked as an EE Trainee (basically just an electrical technician) for NASA wiring electrical systems for small rockets and also during Co-Op quarters I worked nights at various department stores and on the front window of a McDonald's and so forth to get extra money so that during school quarters I didn't have to work, I could just study and drink beer.

 

[jtbell]

I was an undergraduate in those ancient times (early 1970s) when it was possible for a firefighter and a school secretary (my parents) to pay for a small non-elite private residential college for one kid (me). Therefore I didn't need to work in order to pay for my tuition, dormitory and food. I did spend two summers there for pay.

During the summer after my first year, one of the physics professors hired me to help reorganize the stockrooms of lab and lecture-demonstration equipment, throw out old stuff that hadn't been used in years, etc.

During the summer after my third year, I took part in an interdisciplinary research project (chemistry + physics) to study water pollution along a nearby river using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to identify the pollutants. My job was writing FORTRAN code to organize and display the data and results in nice computer printouts.

 

[OmCheeto]

"Transportation Aide" in a hospital.
Job description: I moved things: patients, equipment, and lab specimens, from one place to another.
Full time, minimum wage.

 

[Integral]

I returned to school after getting out of the Navy, so had GI bill to pay day to day expenses. To cover tuition I worked in a saw mill in the summer. Didn't have to work during the school year.

 

[jtbell]

"Transportation Aide" in a hospital.
Job description: I moved things: patients, equipment, and lab specimens, from one place to another.

Nowadays they probably call it "Logistics Engineer".

 

[gleem]

Janitor in the science building at $1.25/hr.

 

[fresh_42]

Nowadays they probably call it "Logistics Engineer".

Supply Chain Manager.

Janitor in the science building at $1.25/hr.

Real Estates Administrator or Facility Manager.

 

[kuruman]

I worked for Food Services which provided $1.25 an hour plus meals. I was thrilled to earn twice that rate working reunions when most undergraduates had already left and labor was scarce. My duties involved washing dishes in the dining halls three nights per week and working a food and refreshment stand at home athletic events. In the latter, I rose through the ranks and earned the coveted brown jacket of stand manager (Whoopee!). I guess now I would be a Catering Specialist.

 

[suri1100134]

I've got a job in a restaurant and work at that for a long time

 

[mathwonk]

I worked in the freshman poolroom, then in a warehouse, then as an unloader at St Johnsbury trucking, then as a lugger in the meat market, and as a reader for a blind woman. (She was a history PhD and taught me to understand the news I read.)

 

[DS2C]

I'm a work-study in the admissions department. Basically just file papers for them when I'm not in class. Not a bad job as they let me study when my work is done!

 

[jtbell]

I worked in the freshman poolroom

One of these?

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I worked on a crawfish farm (an LSU Ag facility) my first year at LSU then moved back to New Orleans over that first summer, returning to work at Wendy's and another burger joint called Rally's.

After my first exam in Modern Physics the next fall, the nuclear physicist who taught the course invited me to work in his laboratory and I was able to quit the job at the crawfish farm. I didn't mind the indoor work, but there were tons of snakes in the ponds, and I hated the snakes.

Some time later, after my first exam in Electricity and Magnetism, the atomic physicist who taught the course invited me to work in his laser spectroscopy lab. After talking it over with the nuclear physicist, I accepted the offer. My programming skills were not yet up to par to fit the experimental data to spherical harmonics, but I came up to speed quickly on operating the lasers and maintaining the ultra high vacuum systems. My main project was developing a new technique to generate the 9th harmonic of a Nd YAG laser.

About a year later, my heart was broken when the atomic physicist took a job at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Chem Dept). But a grad student buddy of mine put in a good word for me with his adviser (a theoretical astrophysicist), and next thing I knew I was cleaning up code for computing thermal cyclotron absorption coefficients. I slung the code, the grad student ran it with the range of parameters, and the prof oversaw the work and checked the validity of the process.

Then the atomic physicist invited me to apply for a summer internship at BNL over the summer after my Junior year. I ended up spending the following spring of my Senior year and following summer working in his atomic physics lab at BNL also. I cobbled together the courses I needed to graduate through a couple distance learning courses, a course at SUNY-Stony Brook, and double dipping allowing my research to count for a couple special projects type courses back at LSU. My main project related to coherent dephasing of quantum beats in Ar-OH, but I slung code for the data acquisition systems and maintained vacuum systems and lasers for various projects as well as helping out the grad students with "all hands on deck" data collection opportunities (running the experiments for their thesis projects). Good times!

 

[mathwonk]

not quite that nice. here's a shot from an old article covering an event in our poolroom.