That's awesome Haley! I'm glad you love your job. What I didn't like about the lab was never knowing my hours. I did quite a bit of compaction testing for roads in new subdivisions. I could go out in the morning and the lifts would pass, then I'd go out in the afternoon and they'd fail. If there was rush, I might have to go back in the evening, or sometimes they would just have me stay on site while they compacted a bit more, or maybe they'd make me take another sample back to the lab and have new results by morning. I was running around so much I usually never even took lunch breaks. I did like how strong I got though
I'm also a tiny person but I gained so much muscle in my 8 months as a lab tech, and I felt so in shape. I had the opposite experience with the men I worked with though. A lot of the machine operators on site would make comments, although some were really really nice. The guys I worked with in the lab at the time were jerks though, they weren't a fan of a girl being there with them, and especially when I was the only one actually trained to do lab tests. They had all learned it from people, but I went to school for it. Anytime I corrected them they got pretty mad.