• Question: Whats your favourite thing about your work?

    Asked by to Lewis, Jess, Ian, Divya, Clare on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I love the experimental part of being a scientist. I’m quite practical and hands on so it really suits me. I like the whole process- designing the experiment, getting everything ready and running it, and then analyzing the data afterwards.

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      The freedom! Part of my job is developing new techniques and coming up with ideas for outreach things like Big Bang. This basically means part of my job description is ‘do you whatever you think is a good idea’ – within limits. I get to read scientific papers, think ‘I can do that’ and then see if I really can and then tell people about it if I think it would be useful for them. When I’ve got a school coming in or a science fair coming up I get to try out all sorts of odd things – pond dipping with an electron microscope for instance.

      I’m basically being paid to do a hobby I could never afford to do by myself

    • Photo: Clare Nevin

      Clare Nevin answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      As a PhD student, I’m a beginner in the research world but even now I am my own boss, so I get to make most of the decisions about what experiments I do and what the next stage of our investigations should be. I work mostly with other PhD students and we all help each other out. From my experience, research has been very collaborative with students supporting each other hugely. Though I know it can get a bit ruthless as you get further into your career and there is more competition.

      So yes, like Ian said, the freedom is great.

    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      My favourite part of my job is doing the research. Working with animals is just wonderful and the great thing about research is even though you think that you might have an idea about what will happen, there will usually be something surprising. I love the challenge of working out what the results mean.

    • Photo: Divya Venkatesh

      Divya Venkatesh answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I love being able to set my own time. I like that there’s no dress code (like in offices) – I can wear whatever. And I love going to conferences – they are great – a new place, so many new people, new ideas.

Comments