Paperwork. Lots of paper work! from writing reports, lab notes, paper work for purchases, paper work for travel expenses, grant applications. It’s all necessary and it serves a purpose but it can take up a lot of time and be very tedious and boring.
Daily. Its usually dealing with non-engineers. They don’t understand why we cant just “do” certain things. Some of them are beyond the laws of physics.
I have to deal with a lot of people in other countries working on the same project – this causes issues like different time zones, language barriers, people thinking you meant one thing on a phone-call when you said something else. This can be difficult, but it’s not really related to engineering itself, more so the managing of projects.
Like Catherine most of my burdens are dealing with managing projects. I have a team that is spread across the country each carrying out a specalised task that all has to fit together.
Ah.. burdened is a strong word.. Every job has overhead associated with. Sometimes managing people is great when all is well and awful when dealing with performance or even personal problems.. but burdened is not the right word.. just some things we all like better than others. The best way to view these things is that they allow you to more appreciate the things you really like doing.
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