-
Asked by anon-233559 to Adam, Varun, Sammie, Rebecca, Anna, Alin on 12 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-233583, anon-232910.
-
Adam Washington answered on 12 Nov 2019:
This is probably a personal flaw, but my number one source of stress at my job is needing to wait one someone else for answers. We have a large team here and, when I have a problem, there’s almost always someone I can go to for help. The price for that is that everyone else is often needing help from the same people and I’ll have to wait for them to get to me. Of course, the world continues moving while I wait and the scientists that I’m working with are wanting me to get things working again as quickly as possible.
I can understand their frustration. I also understand that the people whose help I need are quite probably overworked and frustrated as well. It’s just stressful to be in the middle of these two with no options but to sit and bear it. It leads me to trying to solve more than I should without asking for help, simply so that I can be doing SOMETHING. That does work sometimes and I learn something so that I can solve this myself in the future. More likely, though, I’m asking for help because the people I’m talking to are experts in fields where I don’t even qualify as a novice. Trying to fix it myself first just means a longer delay until the people who really know the answers start working on it.
-
-
Rebecca Shaw answered on 13 Nov 2019:
I reeeally don’t like when my experiments don’t work. It sucks and means I have to do it all over again. Most often, I can never find out why they didn’t work so I have to do 3 or 4 variations of the experiment to see if I can find out a) why it didn’t work the first time and b) if I can get it to work at all!
It can also mean I’m stuck on one thing for a while and that gets frustrating! I know that it is quite common that this happens in science, and it does get easier the longer you’ve been doing it, but I still hate it! -
Varun Ramaswamy answered on 13 Nov 2019:
Hmm, I think hate is too strong a word but certainly the most frustrating thing about my research is its unpredictability. On one hand it is amazing to realise that you’re the only one in the world who knows what you’re working on, but at the same time, when things go wrong, it’s really difficult to tell where it went wrong. You don’t always get what you expect and you really have to try it out quite a few times before you can be sure whether at all it is a mistake or if this is just how things work.
-
Anna Kalorkoti answered on 13 Nov 2019:
It’s more of a pet peeve than a hate, but I really dislike it when people leave the lab untidy, meaning I can’t find what I’m looking for or don’t have enough space for something I need to do! I know I’m guilty of this too, though… it’s very easy when you’re busy to leave a mess & think you’ll come back to it later, then forget all about it!
I also agree with Rebecca’s answer–it’s very annoying when things don’t work & you can’t understand why. But on the positive side, it’s very satisfying if & when you do finally figure it out.
-
Samantha Firth answered on 14 Nov 2019:
Sometimes, scientists don’t really want to talk to me about what they do – They love their work and are brilliant at in but sometimes don’t understand why it’s important to talk to the public about it and show people how cool the stuff is they’re doing! My team often has to chase people for answers but we usually get there! Totally agree with Adam. Waiting for people can slow things down but there isn’t a huge amount you can do about ✨
Comments