• Question: Do you like your job

    Asked by courtneyp to Andrew, Hayley, Daniel, Natalia, Peta on 16 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by lisaspencer, wierdowoody, fatpenguin, ra1n, rebeccacarey.
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      I love my job. I get to play with a big laser and work with great people. Each day exposes me to a series of new and interesting puzzles and mysteries… from how to get a robot arm to pick up one of our targets without smashing the rest of the targets, to why did we get particles coming out of the experiment yesterday but not today. It’s science but it’s also playing the detective game and unravelling mysteries one by one 🙂

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      I love my job too.
      It’s great to be able to go in and know you’re making a contribution to UK and worldwide science, no matter how small your task may seem on that day.
      When I get to work in the main control room of the particle accelerator it’s best – controlling protons whizzing around at 84% speed of light! And then fixing it when it goes wrong, which, like Peta says, is a good detective game and often there’s a lot of people there to put heads together and that’s really good when you get to the bottom of things!
      Being a scientist has also enabled me to travel – something I never really thought about that much, but since I’ve only been here 2 years I’ve been to San Francisco, Spain twice and Japan – it’s a really nice added extra and enables you to meet so many other like minded people 🙂

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      There are bad times. Sometimes everything goes wrong. Some days when I wake up and would rather not go in. Days when people get on your back or don’t appreciate your work. It’s a job, and that’s life.

      But as jobs go it’s pretty good:
      I have flexible working hours, or can work from home – mostly people only care what I’ve done, not when or where I did it.
      I get to travel (mostly to Japan, where my experiment is), I get to learn about something that interests me, I get to write computer programs, which I really enjoy.

      There aren’t many jobs in the world like that.

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      Yes! As the others have said, when things are going well then it is a lot of fun…. but things don’t always go right! It can be tough, understanding complex theories and writing science journals is tricky!

    • Photo: Natalia Parzyk

      Natalia Parzyk answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Yes, if I don’t I won’t be here:) If you think about it just like a job (it’s much more than a job but about that in a sec)so flexible hours at least 8h a day, (sometimes longer) (but if you do 6 one day and 10 next one also will do). It’s nice to do your own science, meet people who talk to you about their interesting discoveries, travel for conferences (so far in UK but still fun) or experiments (I’m doing main at ISIS, Oxfordshire and ILL, Grenoble, France). There are of course moments when you need to repeat calculations or experiments several time and that can be slightly boring but if you keep in mind that maybe on the end there is sth really big.. that keeps you going:) And last but not least: Fascinating superconductors every day:)

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