Back at the beginning of our planning unit, our teacher told us that we were going to have to do a job shadow. We ended up getting the specifics of what we had to do not too much later, after that class I almost immediately decided on who I was going to job shadow. The person who I decided was my best candidate happened to be a family friend that I have known for many years, his name is Brian Webster. My parents didn’t know much about what he did, they just claimed he is a “mad scientist”. What Brian actually does is work in nuclear medicine industry, creating treatments for cancer.
The reason why I chose to shadow Brian is that I am very interested in chemistry currently, and I would like to do something similar to what Brian does or become a Chemical Engineer. Before I went to his warehouse I had no clue what nuclear medicine was, but I figured out that chemotherapy is actually a form of nuclear medicine. After I found out what he actually does for a living I was super intrigued.
On the day of my job shadow I went to work with Brian in the morning and we went to a warehouse, and I was expecting to see inside a large chemistry lab, but instead I saw two large machines that were constantly running. These machines are not machines that you can just buy on the internet, you have to find parts for them then put them together yourself. I was constantly checking out what was going in each part of his warehouse. He currently has two employees to help him take care of what is going on, as there a lot of things you need to do to get the job done. One of the main things you need to do is make sure the machines are working in tip-top shape, so if something breaks somebody has to find a way to solve that problem. The solve those problems by often having to design and manufacture custom parts.
Before Brian created his own company he worked for a company called Nordion, he was a full time chemistry production technician. He essentially worked with radioactive materials, wrote his own procedures, they then later formalized the procedures. Once he made his own company, he started mainly doing physics. What he does now is take certain elements and basically purify them to a certain percentage. The machines do most of the work but he has to do some by hand.
Brian spends most of his time at work at a computer console using spreadsheets to figure out the consistency of the machine, planning for the next shipment, emails, and tuning machines throughout the day.
The job shadow that I did that day, was an experience I will never forget as it was truly eye opening, and it showed me something that I didn’t even know existed until now. It amazed me how much chemistry and physics is used in all of our lives. I am very thankful that Brian gave me that opportunity to see what he does in his everyday life.