What does your office look like?

[sjoh197]

Got some office pics you wanna share? What's your office look like? Did you score big or get shoved into the undesirable basement? 

I just go moved to a very desirable location, but the offices are some of the oldest around. I was left a yellow and brown 1970's teacher desk, a brown metal bookshelf, and very sticky-tacked walls. I just got some stuff to make it a little less depressing.

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2017 by sjoh197

[jmillar]

We were moved to a new building 2 years ago. Open air cubicles, but lots of desk space.

[TakeruK]

@sjoh197, we have very similar bookshelves and desks in our building. I also have the same file tray thing (from IKEA?). Maybe it's an earth science dept thing lol. I don't want to post a picture, but I'll describe it.

The room is fairly big, probably 20 feet wide and 25 feet long. There are 6 students in my office. We don't have cubicle walls separating our desks, bookshelves kind of divide up the area.  There are 3 students on each side of the room, and the middle "aisle" is a common space with chairs for visitors to our office, a couch, and a table with a bucket that I sometimes fill with candy for guests (and officemates). There's a whiteboard in the back of the office that we all use from time to time. 

I have a desk like yours (old metal one) and a table behind me that I use as a bookshelf. I also have a 4-cabinet filing cabinet. Other students have actual bookshelves but no filing cabinet. I estimate my own actual desk area is something like 6 feet wide by 8 feet long, including the furniture. On my desk, for decoration, I have some rocks too, but not as much as your collection! My favourite item is a sample of Ulexite. I also have a sizable Obsidian cube (polished) that I got because it looks very ominous! I saw some giant obsidian spheres that I had also wanted but they were way too expensive. On the walls, I have a Canadian flag and a framed print of this comic (advice from astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield) for inspiration.

@jmillar, I love your stuffed statistical distributions !!

[sjoh197]

@TakeruK People always like my office collection until they come to my house and see my real collection. I started calling my office "overflow" for all the stuff I don't have room for at home. I've started having to collect things in big glass vase like things to contain them

I'm always worried that if I bring in anything nice that someone will steal it or it will just "go missing". 

 

[TakeruK]

I have a bigger collection at home too, but it's pretty small still. I think your "overflow" is comparable in size to what I have at home! Someone in our department has a connection with a wholesale mineral retailer nearby and for one day a year, the department are invited to come and buy stuff at half-off the wholesale price. So, we've been slowly building a collection of minerals and cool rocks that intrigue us. I'm not a real geologist so I don't have deep knowledge about the rocks---they are mostly things that look cool or happen to have cool properties that I randomly learned about. They are mostly small things though, just a few inches in size!

[sjoh197]

I think I have a solid 200 samples at home lol. There's a wholesale mineral show in two weekends. Gonna see what I can add to my office to make it more cheery

[sjoh197]

I didn't realize the purple curtain I got was only one panel... looks like I need to get another one

 

 

[Need Coffee in an IV]

Glad to see you are alive and kicking! My "office" is at home, basically a target desk and my laptop lol. I have my textbooks either on the table surface, in the shelving part, or a bookcase in the living room. Technically, I have an office at the museum but I never used it. I like being home when I work.

[MathCat]

My "office" is basically a half-cubicle consisting of only a desk and a chair. The desks have partitions around them but the chairs are in the open. There's also about 20 people in this room. 

[Neist]

I need to take a picture of my office next time I'm up on campus. I'm not taking traditionally structured courses this semester, so I'm rarely on campus.

Everyone can then marvel at the MAGNIFICENCE of humanities graduate student office space. Hint: it's depressing.  But it is a space with a reasonable amount of currently nigh empty bookshelves, and I recently nabbed a free mini fridge, so it's comfy!

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

Like others, I don't really want to post a picture, but our office used to be a lab so it's pretty huge. It's about 200 square feet (which is pretty close to the size of my last apartment  ) and has 7 lab tables in it being used as desks. We've got it decorated quite nicely - rugs, lounging chairs, plenty of plants, wall decor, etc. Since it used to be a lab, we also have a sink where we wash dishes and such - plenty of room for low-key food preparation. Everyone who walks in comments on how nice our office is, we're pretty spoiled  

[Cheshire_Cat]

My office has furniture in it that is older than I am.  Also, there are three other people in there and they are noisy, so unless I can find time to be alone, I try to work from home. 

[Neist]

Looking at the picture, it's not so bad, I guess. It is definitely a little bland. I used to have an officemate, but they moved to a windowed office.

[spectastic]

Chernobyl 

[scarvesandcardigans]

Our offices are small - there are two for all of the TAs in the program. They used to be mixed in terms of cohort, but this year they switched to first years in one and second years in the other. There are ~8 desks in each office, each with its own computer, filing drawers, overhead shelving. There is also one printer in each office, a general use cabinet for office supplies, and one wall with shelving for old editions of textbooks, reference books, etc - but we don't really use them. There are some extra chairs but not much room for lounging. Some of us have decorated with pictures, tapestries, lamps, etc., but for the most part it's a relatively plain office. The worst part is that there are no windows, but it's a good excuse to get up from the desk every once in a while. 

[kekology4]

omg @sjoh197 i love your rocks!! i've been very uninspired lately trying to re-decorate my room, and ik what im doing now :} 

[Quickmick]

My setup is more of a cube..but there are only 2 others in the row and they are great. If I crane my neck a bit I get to see the ocean.

 

Edited February 10, 2017 by Quickmick

[marynoland]

I went through your article it is really awesome. Mine is more like cubical.

Edited March 10, 2017 by TakeruK
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[eternallyephemeral]

I'm very lucky to share my office with one other person, and we have a large window and a mini-fridge. My side is extremely messy and cluttered, but my office mate keeps hers very clean and almost empty.

I like to remind myself of the "cluttered desk is a cluttered mind" quote and feel superior, because my mind is always cluttered with ideas which is why I have scraps of paper all over the place.

[kimmibeans]

I don't have an office, just a bench and a desk that's kind of like a little cubicle

[maelia8]

In my department, there are too many graduate students for all of us to have offices all of the time, so instead office use rotates based on who has a teaching assignment. This means that at the end of each term, we have to clean out our stuff and turn in the keys, so this discourages anyone from accumulating anything in there and the offices end up looking pretty bare. Most folks just bring their things in every day and leave with them at night, as though it were a classroom. People are likely to accumulate things in their lockers, which are in the graduate lounge area.

[thehungryscholar]

If any of you are on twitter, there is a really amazing hashtag -- #stateofmyphddesk. You guessed it- PhD students post photos of their desks. I love it.

[TakeruK]

51 minutes ago, thehungryscholar said:

If any of you are on twitter, there is a really amazing hashtag -- #stateofmyphddesk. You guessed it- PhD students post photos of their desks. I love it.

I should have chronicled this. As the dissertation deadline loomed closer, it got worse and worse. It's slowly improving now, with brief forays into extreme mess as I empty out one drawer's contents on the desk and then start to sort them into "pack" or "trash" piles. But then I inevitably get distracted with some other task and the pile just stays on my desk for awhile