Typical Day
Monday morning, 7:29AM, Sheila is up when the first rays of sunshine begin streaming through her open window. She turns off the alarm set for a minute later. She doesn't want to disturb her husband. He's still got about half an hour of sleep ahead. She tiptoes out of the bedroom and heads downstairs to begin her day.
A cup of Greek yogurt, a handful of berries, and a piping hot Earl Grey lay before Sheila as she begins going over her day in her head. She's a very detail-oriented, organized person, and she likes to be prepared with a game plan. At 8:15AM, Greg comes down the stairs. They share quiet conversation about the day ahead before the sudden spring of Greg's toast. Grabbing her briefcase, along with a kiss good bye, Sheila heads off to another average workday spent in the company of our future robotic overlords.
Of course, that's a joke. One that never gets on in the circles Sheila runs in. She is a computational mathematician recognizing artificial behavioral patterns and applying them to intelligence programming. To put it more simply, she's a smart person who uses math to help robots think.
After getting her master's degree, the world was Sheila's numerical oyster. She could have worked in numerous research centers or governmental think tanks, but something about creating artificial life spoke to her. Maybe it's because she gets to explore one of the last great undiscovered frontiers, or maybe it's because she was a big Isaac Asimov reader growing up. Whatever it was, it's led her to this moment, 8:58AM on a Monday, pulling in to her (reserved) parking space at work, robotics upstart Litmus TechKnowledgy.
She's not the biggest fan of the company's name, but that's what happens when her boss is a wealthy twenty-nine-year-old former emo kid.
It's 10:00AM, and today's production meeting has begun. Here, Sheila and her team will go over the entire slate of activities: goals for the week, problems from last week that need to be addressed, etc.
The engineers are having hilarious difficulties with one of the machines: After it accomplishes three specific tasks, it starts shaking uncontrollably and catches fire. Sheila's going to inspect the data and see where the problem lies. The meeting disbands around 10:45AM, and everyone gets to work.
It's 2:30PM, and Sheila has had a breakthrough. After analyzing the data and running it through a few hundred simultaneous tests on her laptop, she sends the results on up the food chain. After a few rapid-fire emails between different members of the team, they all agree that her solution is the way to move forward. By 4:00PM when Sheila is detailing her tasks for tomorrow, she gets the confirmation: "It totally worked. U R the best." She knows she is, but she sends back a friendly "Thanks Dave :-)" anyway.
At 5:30PM, Sheila parks in her driveway. Greg hasn't gotten home yet, which she hopes means he's at the grocery store, but could also mean he's grabbing a beer with some of his work buddies. She switches from comfortable work sneakers to her athletic running shoes.
Slightly panting and very sweaty, she walks through her front door around 6:10PM and smiles as she smells dinner cooking on the stove. Greg greets her with a kiss and a good evening, and she heads upstairs to shower.
After a lovely and nutritious dinner, Sheila sets the dishwasher to run and turns on her home computer. By 7:00PM, she's back at work. In addition to her love of math, she really enjoys writing. A few years ago, a friend of hers convinced her to start writing a blog about her job and what she enjoys about mathematics.
Three hundred blog posts later, Sheila has a small following of nerds, scientists, students, and homemakers reading her thoughts and asking her all kinds of math questions. The bit of cash she makes on the side from advertisements is just icing on the cake.
By 10:00PM Sheila is curled up in bed with Greg by her side. They'll do this routine another four days this week. Sometimes, routine is a bad word, but not for Sheila―this is the routine she worked so hard for, and she wouldn't subtract a single part of it.