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Asked by anon-255769 to Zoe, Georgia on 25 May 2020.
Question: is it hard to be a scientist?
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Zoe Ingold answered on 25 May 2020:
Yes and no. Some things can be hard to understand and quite often your experiments don’t wok how you expected them to but it’s so much fun and totally worth it. If you love what you do it makes even the hard times easier.
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Georgia Brittain answered on 26 May 2020:
I feel working as a Scientist, it always comes with its challenges. Especially working in research, a lot of things can go wrong before they go right. But, that can be just as interesting as you find out stuff along the way that you didn’t plan to! Plus, the lab work is always fun to me 🙂
Comments
Leanne commented on :
Sometimes it can be hard – on days when experiments don’t work out or when you’re super busy it can be difficult and then when you get more senior there are challenges especially when it comes to getting funding to carry out your work.
But, it’s a great job and worth the worries – especially when you come across a new discovery! I’m a firm believer that any job can be ‘hard’, though. If it’s something you really love and want to excel at you will work harder at it – most of the pressure I’ve felt being a scientist has come from myself!
Ruth commented on :
It can be very hard as things do not always go to plan. It’s an important skill we have to learn to be able to have something go wrong and motivate ourselves to try again. Although like many things we find difficult it does mean it feels extra satisfying when we manage something that is difficult.
Radha commented on :
Being a scientist is a job, which most take up out of passion towards science. There are many failures but one small successful contribution to science via your experiment or analysis wipes all the previous setbacks.
Kati commented on :
do you like problem solving, puzzles? If yes, you would find being a scientist fun. it has challenges, but I always like to see them as opportunity to find a solution. just need to think outside the box
Carin commented on :
Not harder than any other job. You just have to enjoy finding solutions to sometimes tricky problems, and learn how to get motivated by surprising findings (and quite often failures!).
Kat commented on :
Yes – but in an awesome way. It’s challenging and head scratching but it is never boring! If you enjoy solving puzzles and searching for ways to find out the information you need, it is such a great career. It’s also about collecting lots of results and using the data to tell you the answers.
Enrica commented on :
Sometimes, but is is also amazing.
Daniel commented on :
“Hard” is a relative term. To someone who maybe found science a bit of challenge in school, it must seem incredibly hard to be a scientist. On the other hand, I know a lot scientists who would look at a lawyer for example and think that’s an incredibly difficult job to do!
As others have said, science involves a lot of problem solving. You spend the years at university learning the techniques to solve those problems (and if you do a PhD you spend the time learning to ask the right questions!). It can be tough to learn because chemistry is such a BIG subject. Nobody here knows everything about it! But coming up with a creative solution to a problem is the best feeling – it makes it all worthwhile.
Maria commented on :
It can be, specially when experiments do not work out in the expected way which happens quite often. However, there is the excitement of being able to work in something that interests you and doing it purely in order to advance the knowledge in that area. It gives you quite a bit of freedom whilst you are exploring how to tackle problems and thinking new solutions/methods. However, saying that, as a career it is very challenging, and progression to an stable job a big issue.