• Question: Do you ever get bored or annoyed in your field of work? How do you cope if you get something wrong?

    Asked by amelia to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi amelia,

      What do I do when things go wrong? Shout, pull my hair out, cry (honest!), take a break, forget about work, do something else… and eventually (and hopefully with a clear head) try again!

      I don’t know whether they teach you this at school, but science is all about failure (you come up with an idea. You test it. It doesn’t work. You try again). But it’s also about learning from mistakes so you end up with a better idea of how things work – and how to use that knowledge.

      And yes I do get bored and annoyed sometimes. But the brightest points of what I do far outshine the darkest bits.

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Regarding boredom:
      /siliconj10-zone/2010/06/does-your-work-never-get-boring-i-know-science-must-be-full-of-suprises-and-new-ideas-but-doesnt-it-get-tedious-i/comment-page-1#comment-715

      Coping when it goes wrong… well, I’ve mentioned this elsewhere too but the support I get from my colleagues (and other friends/family) really keeps me going.
      It can be depressing when you feel like you can’t get anything right. But it will pick up in the end! I think lots of jobs have that kind of element though, not just science.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I think things quite often go wrong in science so you learn quite quickly to deal with it. It’s often quite difficult moving from working as a medical doctor to being a scientist because if something goes wrong in medicine it’s probably going to affect a living person. If something goes wrong in science it might cost money but it’s (usually) the case that you can pick yourself up and do it again. if you find yourself lying awake at night thinking about things you probably nede to take a break. I Like this quote from Charles Schultz for laughing at myself a bout worrying too much.’

      Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?”/ Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

      As to being bored and annoyed, you’ll find it’s different when you are out in the World on your own. You have to go to school at the moment and you probably have to live where your parents tell you. When everything is your own choice you’ve no-one to blame for being bored and annoyed but yourself.
      Of course, i do some boring experiments where it seems that all that happens is i transfer tiny amts of fluid from tube into another for hours on end but the end result is always worth it.

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