• Question: being a scientist sounds really fun but what are the downsides? If any

    Asked by zugarplumfairy to Philip, Carol, Ellie, John, Rebecca on 30 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by crazybeanz, zgrafitipig.
    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      Like all jobs, there’s always paperwork (which can be very very boring)…. like filling in a risk assessment to prove to your boss that your experiment isn’t likely to kill anyone!

      The downsde of my job is that I have to write a 100,000 word report with my results! BUT the exciting thing is that when I finish that, I’ll become DR Carol 🙂

    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      The downsides are spending lots of time in meetings (talking about boring things instead of actually doing science)!

      Also when things don’t work out and you can spend days or weeks trying to figure out why and fixing the problem – that is super frustrating!!

    • Photo: Eleanor Turpin

      Eleanor Turpin answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      The working conditions can be a bit rubbish as it’s very hard to get a permanent job. And without a permanent job it can be hard to do things like buy a house or have a baby. It’s a sacrifice we have to make to have an interesting job.

    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      In most jobs I think there are good bits and bad bits. Like the others have said there can be paperwork to do.

      There are also lots of people working on the same problems, so it can be frustrating to spend lots of time working on something and then find that somebody else discovers or invents it first. Without competition I guess there would be no challenge though!

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