• Question: whats the worst part of your job?

    Asked by alice16 to David, Rebecca, Simon, Verity, Wei on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by tino397.
    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      The worst part of my job is the process of handing in grant applications and research articles to be published in journals.

      Imagine the biggest forms you can imagine with many many MANY pages, each one has lots of questions/information needed boxes, which you don’t really know how to fill because the explainations are just so confusing. Each application can take days and make me feel like my brain has been liquidised. Oh and you’re ALWAYS in a huge rush!

      Even after you submit the forms, you then have to wait for other scientists who have been asked to check through the documents and your work, sometimes they can be a bit mean and very demoralising by picking at little mistakes; my last paper had been rejected 5 times, but it’s being published now! lol

    • Photo: Rebecca Handley

      Rebecca Handley answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Tidying up! So as I work on bacteria we have to make sure all our rubbish is clean and all the bacteria are dead. We sterilise everything! Sterilising involves heating everything up in high powered steam, and the worst part about that is the smell! Eurghk! I cant even describe it, its like the smell of hot sweaty feet.

    • Photo: David Armstrong

      David Armstrong answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      The worst part of my job is probably the hours. While I get to choose when I work a lot of the time, the access to equipment can be difficult so I often have to work at weekends. It’s worst when it is sunny outside and I have to work in a dark lab.

    • Photo: Verity Nye

      Verity Nye answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      There can be a lot of politics higher up the food chain and sometimes the powers that be appear to have motivations other than the advancement of science. This can be hugely frustrating for us scientists, particularly when it seems that time and money are being wasted.

    • Photo: Simon Trent

      Simon Trent answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Lack of money and facilities to do the crazy out there experiments that most scientists think of every now and then. Some of the biggest breakthroughs in science happened by chance or mistake or someone having more money than sense (this was certainly true in the 1700 and 1800s)

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