• Question: are you always thinking about work even when unnecessary

    Asked by anon-201559 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 12 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      No I wouldn’t say so. People think doing a PhD consumes your whole life but I still have lots of time to do other things and not think about physics.

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      I’ve obviously been doing this for too long, and/or am a bit madder than @Sophia! I do find my mind ranging over science stuff a lot… actually, I often have the best ideas when not officially working on it, so maybe I should work from home more. I find that doing something that is so important that it drives other things out of my head is a good “mental detox”: alpine mountaineering is great for that, because all I have capacity to think about is staying alive!

    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      I find myself thinking about it an awful lot but that’s partly because I have a fiance also doing a PhD and I take work home with me a lot too

    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      I’m probably somewhere between @Sophia and @Andy on the madness scale 😉
      Like Andy, some ideas pop into my head when I’m not at work. I try to at least write these ideas down, since a good idea shouldn’t go to waste!
      Like Sophia, I do other things like sport, which completely take my mind off work. (They don’t usually require me to worry too much about staying alive though!).
      From what I’ve seen, scientists will often have various interests and not think about work ALL the time.

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