• Question: What is the hardest thing about your job?

    Asked by anon-269925 on 20 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Nooshin Ghavami

      Nooshin Ghavami answered on 20 Nov 2020:

      The hardest thing is that sometimes things don’t work, or at least they don’t work in the time frame that’s needed due to pressure for writing papers and publishing and grant money. I’ve started to learn tho when I should stop working on a certain experiment or project if it is not worth the time and effort

    • Photo: Ben Lewis

      Ben Lewis answered on 20 Nov 2020:

      The hardest thing for me is that it’s often not clear what the “right” answer is. When you’re at school, questions have a correct answer and so you can always know how well you’re doing. Now, it’s a lot harder to know if I am doing well! That’s why it’s important to have people to work with who you can discuss problems with, compare how things are going and generally check in with each other.

    • Photo: Duncan Sleeman

      Duncan Sleeman answered on 21 Nov 2020:

      The hardest thing about my job doesn’t really effect only me. My role comes under the umbrella of Heathcare Scientist (HCS). Here in the the UK there is a national shortfall in HCS’s. Due to this it can be very hard to meet the demand required to meet our patients needs.

      In my particular role of a Cardiac Physiologist there is currently a 30% shortfall in qualified staff. There is currently 64 jobs being advertised on NHS jobs for our role. There are also many private service providers that require staff.

    • Photo: Stephanie Longet

      Stephanie Longet answered on 21 Nov 2020:

      Sometimes the system in science. Competitive atmosphere. Pressure to publish, to get funding. But except this, science is fantastic ! I have found a good work environment and I enjoy my research projects.

    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 23 Nov 2020:

      I’m not very good at writing computer code, so I struggle with that.

    • Photo: Estela Gonzalez Fernandez

      Estela Gonzalez Fernandez answered on 23 Nov 2020:

      I really struggle with talking in public, and it is very important to participate in Seminars and other science communication events. However I try to participate in talks to practice and overcome my struggle. Also, science is a very competitive job and look for funding is not easy.

    • Photo: Ann Ager

      Ann Ager answered on 26 Nov 2020:

      Applying for grants to do a piece of research that you think is exciting and being rejected! But this is part of the job – there is not an unlimited amount of money for research and what is available from the government (tax-payers) or medical charities (from donations by the public) needs to be spent to get the most benefit. So after a few days of disappointment, I think of ways to improve the research and try again somewhere else (just as authors do when their books are rejected by one publisher, they go to a different one and try again).

Comments

  • Photo: Romain

    Romain commented on :

    Hi, to me, the hardest thing is that some science projects can take many years to develop and ripen into a story that we can tell and understand. It really requires a lot of patience. In some cases, after a long time, it can even fail, or rather tell us we were wrong to make some hypotheses (which is absolutely fine in the world of science!). So seeing and keeping in mind that it’s all quite a long term approach can be difficult !