• Question: If you could change anything about your job what would you change?

    Asked by to Clare, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      The one thing that takes lots of time and isn’t really that fun is watching back all of our videos and recording the behaviour of the animals. When we give the animals puzzles we video what they do and how they solve them. Then we watch the video and write down all of the behaviours that they do. This can take a very long time, because you have to keep pausing the video. For one hour of research, it can take four or five hours to record all of the behaviours!

    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      It isn’t really about my job, but more the career in academics: I would change how the funding works, because at the moment you quite often only get money for a year or two at a time. It means you spend a lot of time doing applications for more money. Eventually you get a permanent job though!

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      The cost – my microscopes are very expensive things and can cost about £700 a day to use, that stops a lot of people being able to use them as the university doesn’t like me letting people without grant money getting on the machines. In a perfect world I’d let lots more people use them.

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