• Question: is there anything in your job that you do not enjoy

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 22 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Veronica Celorrio

      Veronica Celorrio answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      Hello Rockstarzahra!
      I think what I do not enjoy is cleaning the glassware. For some of the experiments I do I need the glassware really, really clean not to get any external contamination. And we don’t have a dishwaser in the lab…

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      Hey!

      Yes, as with everyone there’s a couple of things I don’t really enjoy. The top one is reading very boring science papers. It’s really important for scientists to read science papers, it’s how we know what everyone else is doing in science. Any important discoveries made are also published first in science papers. Some of them can be really interesting, but the problem is a lot of them can be very long and boring!

      The other thing I don’t really like is the long walk between my office and my lab. At the moment my lab is in a different building, about five minutes away. This isn’t a problem when it’s nice and sunny, but if it’s raining and I’ve forgotten my umbrella (which I do quite a lot) I get absolutely soaked! 😛

      These are only small things though. I can deal with them because most of the time I absolutely love my job! 🙂

    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hey Rockstarzahra,

      For the experiments I do, I need really clean bottles and glassware. To make them squeaky clean I have to wash them all multiple time with hot water, acid and distilled water which can take a long time if I have a lot of bottles (sometimes more than 100).

      I try and liven things up a little by pumping out some music in the background, but I can’t say I enjoy it!

    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Great question Rockstarzahra, and pretty tough to answer as I love my job…..although I guess with every job there are parts which are less enjoyable. I think one of the things I enjoy least is reading about the work other scientists have done – I love to find out what they have done, but I dont especially enjoy reading, and scientists usually report their work in a format called ‘papers’ – these can be really dull and often are difficult to understand. It would be nice if they were like magazine articles and nice and easy to read as I do find it really interesting to hear what others are doing – often I find out by going to conferences and chatting to other scientists rather than reading papers!

      I also dont particularly enjoy the cleaning after my experiments….my equipment is pretty complicated and I need to make sure its very clean so this usually takes a few hours…..I wish there was some sort of machine which would do it for me!

    • Photo: Harriet Aitken

      Harriet Aitken answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi Rockstarzahra,

      Definitely cleaning my glassware! Imagine doing dishes for about 5 hours a week. Not fun, but the other parts of my job make up for it and I usually try to get one of the other researchers in the lab to help me so I’ve got somebody to chat with.

      Thanks for the question, Hattie.

Comments