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Asked by anon-288219 on 28 Mar 2021.
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Felicity Hunter answered on 11 Mar 2021:
What an excellent question! During one of my projects at University, my experiment just wasn’t working the way that I planned no matter how hard I worked on it and everything seemed to go wrong at each step. I felt like I was putting in so much effort but had nothing to show for it. It made me worried that I wouldn’t get a good grade on the project and that maybe I wasn’t cut out for science. From this experience I learnt a very important lesson that science isn’t just about always producing positive results. Instead, a big part is working on experiments to make them better and better. You can still gain lots of valuable information from negative results. Although I didn’t get any ‘positive’ data from the experiment I was able to write a really good report on all the work I had done and everything I had learnt during my project and achieved a really good grade. I also learnt valuable lessons about persevering when things feel tough and taking breaks when things become overwhelming. I feel like I am a more skilled and confident scientist after having that experience 🙂
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Claire Price answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Yes. Whilst I love science and doing experiments, it isn’t always easy. 90% of experiments don’t work first time and that can be very, very frustrating. I wanted to make a microbe make a specific chemical. It took months of it not working before I got the result I wanted. Then I did a happy dance in the lab 🙂
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Chris Waller answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Definitely – you’ll find that with a lot of careers that there will always be difficult periods that you are required to deal with. For me in particular I’ve had periods during method development projects where our clients wanted us to develop a test for a particular drug at a particular concentration, but we were struggling to do so – no matter what we tried we couldn’t get the test sensitive enough. It is times like that where you just need to take a step back, take a deep breath and start logically breaking down the problem. You’d be surprised how much valuable information “bad” results can give you. I was particularly fortunate to have the help of several very clever people who together helped me to figure out a way to sidestep the issue and come up with a creative solution to the problem.
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Anna Westland answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Yes, lots! At the moment I am struggling with my data analysis. I’ve collected all the information I need for a project, but now I need to find out what it all means! This involves doing some statistics with my data, and also a bit of computer programming – these are both things that I find difficult =/ I’m just trying to be proud of my little achievements to keep me going. It’s very satisfying when I actually get a result!
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Callum Thomas answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Definitely! As other people have said experiments don’t always go to plan and when things don’t work out it can be stressful and disappointing. But luckily I have always had good supervisors who were able to help me through problems and make me feel less worried about not getting the results I expected. I also moved to Germany to study for two years which was really fun ,but living in a different country and learning a new language was a struggle at times. But in the end I am really glad I did it as I met lots of amazing people and learnt a lot.
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Jess Buddle answered on 11 Mar 2021:
Great question! I struggled at first when i went to uni as i didnt know anyone and although i could do the work i was worried i wouldnt do very well, i really struggled alone until talking to my tutor and he gave me so much confidence! I ended up being the highest scoring degree out of ~500 people! Which shows what yu can achieve when people believe in you! That same tutor inspired me to do a PhD too!
So my advice would always be if you struggle then speak to someone – they may just end up putting you on the right path! And be confident in what you can do 🙂
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Karen Burstow answered on 11 Mar 2021:
A few months into starting my job as a scientist, I got quite stressed and overwhelmed with how much there was to do at work! I spoke to my colleagues about it and they helped me to prioritise and say ‘no’ to taking on projects, when I already had too much on. And from getting more experience at what I could get done and pushing back on deadlines when I needed, I’m now much happier and relaxed!
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Jo Brodie answered on 14 Mar 2021:
Hi Jessica – yes, I was once trying to separate cells and fragments of cells and my method had been working well and then suddenly stopped. I couldn’t work out what was going on – I would usually see neat bands in my test tubes then they all disappeared, which was irritating and puzzling.
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After several frustrating attempts to get things working again, changing something slightly each time to see what difference it made, I discovered that the lab’s pH meter* was faulty and that one of the liquids I used to keep my cells in suspension (and which needed to be at a fairly precise pH level) had the wrong pH and was damaging my cells instead of supporting them! A new pH meter arrived and my bands reappeared 🙂
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A bigger struggle was when I decided that although I loved working in a lab and *doing* science I really enjoyed writing about it and that I wanted to do that. Although I was happy to make the move to becoming a science communicator it was quite an adjustment for me – I had thought that my career would go in one direction and suddenly I was making a big decision that would change all that, it was a bit unsettling at first. But it was the right decision for me and I’m glad I made it.
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Jo
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*the tool we use to check the acidity / alkali level of a solution. -
Katie Endersby answered on 15 Mar 2021:
Yes! When I started working in research, in my PhD, I found it really hard to adapt to working all by myself on such big projects, especially when the experiments didn’t always work! But I am really glad I persevered, and learned both how to work independently and how to ask for help from the people around me when I needed it! I found that people are often a lot more willing to help you out than you might think at first, and it can be really great to learn new things and collaborate with people.
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