Question: What do you do every day?

Michel Dugon answered on 7 Nov 2014:

Wow, that’s a tough question! Things change a lot from one day to another…

Typically, I spend 3 days at the university per week. The rest of the time, I am either organising workshop for schools with all my animals, or I work outside (looking for spiders at the moment!).

When I am at the university, my days start about 9am and fisnish… late, very late! I spend a lot of time working in the research laboratory with my students (I have 11 students working on bug projects at the moment), replying emails, attending meetings and writing articles about my research. I spend also some time reading the last scientific news in special journals (you can check the link to see some scientific articles about spiders and scorpions: http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_tocs/JOA_contents_v41n1.html). ). From January till March, I spend most of time preparing my classes and teaching undergraduate students (up to 700 in one class!).

When I am working outside the university, I am either in the countryside looking for spiders, centipedes or other bugs, or I am showing my animals and explaining my research in schools somewhere in Ireland. I love going to schools with snakes, and spiders and scorpions: the students are amazed and it is a great occasion for me to speak about what I really love.

I also spend the summer months working for TV shows ( Ihave my own little TV show on RTE), films and documentaries. It’s a nice change from my typical day at university!

As you can see, there are so many things to do that I hardly have to identical days; this is what makes it so special: I never have time to get bored 🙂