• Question: is your job ever boring, when you cant work out the answer to something?

    Asked by tessa to Chris, Kay, Kerstin, Lorna, Liv on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Hi Tessa, I wouldn’t really say it’s boring when I can’t work out something. More challenging and often frustrating. The feeling of actually solving the problem is quite cool though. I think I get a bit bored when I have to make solutions and reagents in the lab 🙁

    • Photo: Olivia Hibbitt

      Olivia Hibbitt answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Hi Tessa,
      Yeah is the short answer! Science is a LOT of routine and a LOT of repeating experiments. The boredom doesn’t usually come with not being able to work out the answer to something, that’s when it gets kind of exciting because you have to think of new ways to ask the question…..the real boredom comes from failed experiments! Biology is full of failures! At the moment I’m running lots of things called western blots, which look at protein. They take two days and have a failure rate of about 60%….needless to say, at the moment my work is about as interesting as watching back to back episodes of the daily politics show!

    • Photo: Kay Penicud

      Kay Penicud answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Yeah, every now and then my job is definitely boring. When you’re repeating an experiment for the zillionith time just to be sure of the results you get. When nothing is working its very frustrating. When you’ve spent the whole weekend or whole evening in the lab only for the experiment not to work anyway.

      However, the pros definitely outweigh the cons. I love it when you really nail why something is happening. I love when you think about a problem for a few days and suddenly think of the perfect experiment to do to answer the question. And I love that if you are struggling, there is a whole international network of scientists you can turn to for help.

      Its definitely far far far far less boring then some of my science lessons at school were! Plus labs are pretty relaxed and we listen to a lot of music, which takes away the boredom.

    • Photo: Lorna Houlihan

      Lorna Houlihan answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Yes – sometimes of course. Sometimes when i can’t figure things out I feel like pulling my hair out! Or it can be really boring if you are doing the same thing over and over again. Then I listen to some music.

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