• Question: Is there anything that has ever made you wonder why you became a Scientist? Any difficulties or complications?

    Asked by curlysue2000 to Ben, Dave, Sam, Susana on 26 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      Sometimes – I hit difficulties all the time – we’re doing stuff that has never been done before, so there are bound to be ccomplications.

      It’s part of the job though so it doesn’t really make me want to quit.

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      You have to learn to accept quite early on that sometimes you’re going to spend a week doing something only for it to not work. As Ddavid said, everything is new so it’s going to take time. Normally you just go home feel a bit annoyed, wonder why you bother but you always decide to give it another go.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      I need to worry about money for research and deadlines all the time. So it is never a very relaxed job, and at times when I am more tired I wonder why I didn’t just chose something that felt easier. But I know the answer: I enjoy being a scientist 🙂
      In the end it all comes down to knowing yourself. If I had an easier job, I would be bored and looking for other things to do until I found something that challenged me. So I’d probably get back to where I am now!

    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      Sometimes. As people have mentioned, when an experiment goes wrong that you’ve put a couple of weeks worth of work into it can feel like you’ve wasted a lot of valuable time. But that’s why we record everything we do. So that those two weeks become a learning exercise, we look back at what we did and work out what went wrong then figure out how we can improve it for next time.

      “Remember, kids, the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down!” 🙂

      I’ve also found it has put some strain on certain relationships, but you work through this.

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