• Question: does being a scientist get boring at times?

    Asked by Anon to Sara, Siana, Carolyn, Peter, Richard on 6 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Imogen, camswallace, Madame Candy.
    • Photo: Sara Falcone

      Sara Falcone answered on 6 Nov 2015:

      I guess that all jobs are boring at times so I am not going to lie to you: yes, sometimes it is boring. In my case, I have to wait for mice to be of certain ages (that we call time points). In theory we plan the breeding so we have always something going on….in practice, mice don’t always do what you want so there are times where you just have to wait for them to take their time (and that’s fair enough).

    • Photo: Siana Jones

      Siana Jones answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      Nice question guys:)

      Yes, it gets boring. Fortunately the folk who volunteer to do my study can be really fun to chat to so that keeps things interesting on a daily basis. Writing up results/reviewing literature is fun and conferences are fun but analysis can be a bit dull.

    • Photo: Richard Unwin

      Richard Unwin answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      Yes – we have lots of boring things to do as well – a person in my lab in spending the day putting small amounts of liquid into about 300 tubes as part of her experiment, all of which she’s had to label first. That’s not the most interesting job in the world, but it’s necessary to get the answer to a really exciting question, in this case can we see what happens to proteins under the skin as we age.

Comments