People often ask me what a typical day at my job is like. The answer is that there is no typical day, but I’ll attempt to outline the highlights of my job.

My working day usually starts about 9:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. That’s absolutely perfect for me as I have never been a morning person. I work in an office building in downtown St. Louis, so the hours also help me avoid most of the morning rush hour. Most of the other reporters on staff arrive about the same time I do, although some are early birds.

My aversion to morning can be overcome with the proper motivation. I’ll phone a scientist or doctor in the early morning hours if they aren’t available at more civilized hours. I generally make those calls from home, sometimes while still in my pajamas.

The first order of the day is to see who is trying to get my attention. I log on to my computer while checking voice mails. I return urgent voice messages and make note of others so I can return them later.

I frequently get calls from readers complimenting or criticizing stories I written.

Most ask for more information. Some want to share their personal experiences. Some fill up my voicemail box with rants.

My other callers are usually PR people attempting to pitch me stories. Often the person is pitching a story that doesn’t fall on my beat. When that happens, I either ignore and delete the message, or I call back and tell them which of my colleagues is a better fit for the story.

Then I tackle the avalanche of e-mail that buries my inbox every day. I receive hundreds of e-mails in a day. Some are spam. Some are notes from readers or sources commenting on a story I’ve written or requesting information. The vast majority are press releases, list serves, and journal tables of contents, embargo notifications and other communications from media relations folks.

Processing e-mail takes a huge chunk of my time. I scan for newsworthy stories with a local angle and plan my day and week accordingly.

One perk – or shackle, depending on how you view it – science writers get is access to the embargo system. Most other reporters tackle stories as they break. Science reporters get advanced notice of papers coming out in major journals about a week before the publication date. The stories are embargoed for a specific date and time. Once the embargo expires, reporters are free to print or air their stories. That gives the reporter time to prepare a story with assurances that no one is going to scoop it. On the other hand, it means a science reporter has a harder time getting a leg up on the competition in breaking news.

The rest of my time is spent making and taking phone calls, sending and receiving e-mails, sifting through piles of snail mail, doing research and conducting interviews.

Whenever possible, I like to conduct interviews in person. Although newspaper stories rarely allow room for personal details of the researchers involved, face-to-face interviews give me insights into who my sources are. One doctor I interviewed had an office stuffed with figurines of the genie from Aladdin and Spongebob Squarepants. The whimsical collection softened my impression of the hard-driving woman I had spoken with on the phone.

Often, the in-person interview digresses into other topics. Those are usually far more interesting – and preliminary – than the subject you originally came to discuss. Those visits provide fodder for later stories.

My day is nothing if not unpredictable, and sometimes very stressful. I’m often juggling several stories at once and must be prepared to switch gears instantly. For instance, I was hard at work doing research on a story about sleep apnea when my phone rang. I picked up to find astronaut Sandra Magnus at the other end of the line. She and another astronaut are from the St. Louis area and were preparing for a training mission on the ocean floor. I’d requested interviews with them weeks earlier, but was told I wouldn’t be able to speak with them in time to meet my deadline. But then the astronauts found a window of time and gave me a buzz. I had to stop thinking about sleep apnea and start thinking about space exploration.

That day followed one in which I wrote a short feature on Neanderthals, did an interview for the sleep apnea story and then discovered that local researchers had just published a paper about a potential cure for diabetes. I scanned the press release and journal article, called the researcher for an interview, reached an outside commenter and then wrote the story. The entire process with editing took about 4 hours.

Those kinds of days are not typical, but they’re also not unusual. Sometimes I get the luxury of working on more in-depth stories. I may spend a week or two researching and conducting interviews before I start writing. During those times, I have to resist the temptation to work on other interesting stories that come up, unless they are very important.

I generally head for home between 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Some nights I’m still at work until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., but those are rare evenings for me now. Early in my career it seemed to take longer to do things and I often had longer hours.

I rarely take my work home. I get most weekends off. Every couple of months, I do have to work a weekend shift as a general assignment reporter. I’ve covered sumo wrestling and soap box derbies, piano recitals, USO Christmas parties and people’s efforts to clean up after storms on those shifts. It can be a welcome break from dense science stories, plus I get a day off during the week to compensate.

My typical day is rather atypical. That just means I’m rarely bored, I meet interesting people, and I learn something new all the time.

I think it’s the perfect job.