After finishing my MSci degree and leaving Cambridge in 2000, I worked for the oilfield services company Schlumberger as a Field Engineer until June 2003. As they put it, 'it's not a job, it's a lifestyle', which is true.. it took me to Utah, working on land rigs there (and in Colorado and Wyoming), then to Kazakhstan, working in the Tengiz oilfield near the Caspian sea. I finally ended up in Azerbaijan, first working with BP on the semi submersible rigs 'Dada Gorgud' and 'Istiglal', then with a Chinese company back onshore. Offshore, rig food has the advantage that you can turn up for it 4 times per day (every 6 hours) - the disadvantage is, of course, that often you work long enough hours to need to....
During the course of the MSc in Hydrographic Surveying, I realised that I wanted to keep doing research, and decided to look for a PhD. I found one : ) but needed to wait a year to arrange funding.
During the year I worked in various ways (including a stint on the ticket desk at the Natural History Museum...) and managed to be lucky enough to work as a 'Temporary Marine Geophysics Technician' for the British Antarctic Survey for two months on a research cruise on RRS James Clark Ross, as well as some other hydrographic surveying contracting.
I was on the BAS cruise to assist with finding suitable sites for sediment cores and general seafloor mapping while underway. Under the capable guidance of Dr Claire Allen, diatom expert, several cores were taken and are now undergoing analysis back in the UK.
The ship was the 'James Clark Ross' which is equipped with a (large!) multibeam echosounder and sub-bottom profiler (and lots of other equipment and labs too). The cruise was very interesting and great fun, as all the scientists helped each other with their different projects and were enthusiastic about explaining their work. My transferable(!) skills now include detangling fish from nets...
The British Antarctic Survey website has web diaries of the cruises.
After that it was time for the PhD, and since May 2010 I've had a job as a researcher at Newcastle University.