• Question: is it hard working#

    Asked by anon-201311 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      It can be. Sometimes its hard on the brain understanding whats going on or more recently, I was super busy and working on my feet lots to get samples ready for a deadline. But its not always like that and its usually enjoyable even if it is hard

    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Science is hard work, but that’s one of the best bits. With high challenge comes high reward. If you’ve had to work hard to solve a problem, it feels so good when you do solve it!

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Yes, I’d say my job needs a lot of hard work. Maybe even more so as I get more senior: you tend to only get given more things to be in charge of, and none ever taken away! That’s the same in all jobs, as far as I can tell. But I think nearly everyone in my area does the work because they are passionate about it, so a lot of the demand to put effort in comes from inside ourselves. That said, I’m careful to never demand unreasonable things of my students and staff — if something’s impossible within a certain timescale, then we should take a bit longer and get it right, rather than try to kill ourselves with overwork: that would be good for no-one, and anyway probably just lead to mistakes.

    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      I definitely have to work hard. At the same time, because I’m still a student it is so much more flexible than pretty much any ‘real’ job so it is easier in the sense that most of the time I can choose when I want to work myself.

    • Photo: George Fulton

      George Fulton answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Yes work is hard. I often get faced with difficult problems that no-one has the answer to! This is actually quite exciting, but you often find yourself metaphorically bashing your head against a wall for the first few weeks as you try to dismantle the problem. But when you finally solve it, it does feel great. That’s science and that’s why I do it 🙂

    • Photo: Emily Lewis

      Emily Lewis answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      It can be frustrating when something is not working and I don’t know why! Maybe there is a bug in my code I haven’t seen, or it is producing silly answers because of a mistake I made in my theory.
      I have found that the best thing to do in this situation is to go have a cup of tea to relax, think about the overall reason I’m doing all of this, then when I have another try with a clear head I usually sort out the problem 🙂
      (If not I just go ask my team for help and it gets sorted)

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