• Question: Whats the biggest challenge of being a scientist

    Asked by Mayonnaise Bees to Eleni, Hannah, Jenny, Oli, Steven on 7 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Lewis -T-.
    • Photo: Oliver Charity

      Oliver Charity answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hi Mayonnaise bees,

      I would say the biggest challenge is getting passed the feeling that you are stupid, because it happens a lot. Many of the people I work with (including me) feel like they are ‘frauds’ and that they dont know how they got to the position they hold (despite them actually being good scientists).
      Oli

    • Photo: Steven Street

      Steven Street answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hi Mayonnaise Bees,

      That’s a really good question! Hmmmmm…..

      I think that one of the biggest challenges of being a scientist is dealing with experiments when they arn’t working. Science by it’s very nature is investigating the unknown, which means that half the time the things you’re trying to do might well be impossible. The other half of the time even when they do work, you might not know what happened, or what your results all mean!

      Learning how to think about why experiments don’t work, and progressing past the problems that you meet while staying positive is quite hard! How your research is going will always affect your emotions, so if things arn’t working it can make you feel like your having a bad day!

      The flip side of the coin is that when you finally do overcome your problems, you feel on top of the world!

      Hopefully that answers your question?
      Steve

    • Photo: Hannah Bolt

      Hannah Bolt answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hi Mayonnaise Bees,

      I also think the same things as Oli and Steve. Another thing that is really hard about being a scientist, especially scientists at a University, is finding funding for the work we do. Science can be very expensive, buying chemicals or equipment, as well as paying the scientists, takes a lot of money. To get funding scientists have to apply for money from lots of places and this usually involves writing lots of long documents explaining what we want to do. The pressure to apply for this money can be very stressful and takes a lot of time, especially if you have a few unsuccessful applications!

    • Photo: Jenny Batson

      Jenny Batson answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      Hi
      I agree with Oli, Steve and Hannah. The biggest challenges are realising that you don’t understand everything and accepting that, overcoming experimental problems (which can be tiny things but make the difference between a successful experiment and a failed experiment) and finding funding to do more research. The biggest challenge of all is to keep going despite these things because eventually you can overcome them and get good results!
      Jenny

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