Biocurious

/ a biophysics blog

Poll: Windows in your office?

Posted 23 June 2006 by PhilipJ under &

Vancouver’s weather has gotten really nice the past few days, and luckily it looks like the weekend won’t disappoint. I say luckily because most days I barely notice, since neither my office nor either of the wet lab or optics lab have any windows to the outside world. The optics lab I can appreciate—errant laser beams hitting people outside of the lab probably wouldn’t be a good thing, as unlikely as it would be, but the office and wet lab being closed concrete boxes really does a number on the mental health.

Since just about every faculty member has a nice office with a window or two, this poll is for students. Does your office or any of your labs have windows?

  

  1. Andre    23 June 06    #

    No!


  2. Arcane Gazebo    23 June 06    #

    Office: yes, and if it weren’t for the bell tower we’d be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge from it.

    Lab: no, since it’s in the second basement.


  3. luke Quinton    24 June 06    #

    The second basement. . . wow,that sounds like an interesting place to be.


  4. Fred Ross    25 June 06    #

    Funnily, my bench has big windows looking north over the campus, while my office just has big interior windows looking over the courtyard of the building it’s in.

    A bit reversed from the usual way of things, I believe.


  5. Bumpero    26 June 06    #

    My office has big windows, but my office is in kind of a ditch, so I see mainly a hill when I look out


  6. Xerxes    26 June 06    #

    I can see the Empire State Building from my office unless it’s too hazy.


  7. PhilipJ    26 June 06    #

    I get a tiny amount of solace that sometimes it is too hazy for you.

    Does that look anywhere near Rockefeller? Maybe you and Fred can see each other! :)


  8. kstrna    27 June 06    #

    Every lab I have worked in has had windows. Usually a long wide window at every bay. Many of the lab classrooms in college did not have windows though.


  9. PhilipJ    27 June 06    #

    kstrna – And you’re a bio person, right? As Arcane Gazebow and Andre mentioned up above, we experimental physicists seem to get the really short end of the stick when it comes to lab space, as everyone wants to get in the vibration-quiet basement for their optical benches and AFMs. My biology colleagues all have beautiful window’d labs. I’m very jealous.


  10. J.p    27 June 06    #

    I revel in the fact that I have 3 big panes of window looking east over campus; Physics building in the forground with Signal Hill in the distance….

    Although, Phil and André, at least you don’t have the distraction of a window… you’re probably WAY more focused than us window-gazers… but I don’t think that’s much consolation, is it?


  11. TheBrummell    27 June 06    #

    “My biology colleagues all have beautiful window’d labs.”

    Nope. I’m down the hall in SFU Biological Sciences, B9210, no windows here. Of course, our lab was hacked out of a much larger room, that does have windows.

    We just get a hint of cigarette smoke from the clueless people smoking near the GIANT intake vents.


  12. PhilipJ    27 June 06    #

    I hadn’t realised there were labs in that building without windows of some kind. That’s a bit of a drag.

    I was thinking in particular of the lab I collaborate with at UBC, who are in the new life science complex. Every lab has windows that can see the sky, as the whole roof is a skylight. Super pleasant to work in, even when it is grey out.


  13. kstrna    29 June 06    #

    I am in a biochemistry/biophysics dept. Depends on the institution. Know a number of labs at different places in the same field that do not have windows. A few of my lab members have visited such labs to learn techniques and told us how people in those labs tended to work longer especially during the winter because they did not know when it started getting dark outside.


  14. RPM    29 June 06    #

    Office yes. Lab yes.

    Our building is a rectangular prism. The hallway on each floor is a loop. Most of the offices and labs are on the outside of the loop, so most rooms have windows. The inner part of the building has the elevator shafts, constant temp rooms, and other small rooms (janitor closets, dark rooms, etc). Did any of that make sense?


  15. Bill Hooker    3 July 06    #

    Does your office or any of your labs have windows?

    Yup:

    http://sennoma.net/main/edits/views.html

    I cheated just a little: the top one is the view from the lab windows at my last job and the other two are taken from my current place of employment, from the shared postdoc office.


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