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Asked by capital letter to Daniel, Freya, James, Miranda, Usman on 19 Jun 2015.
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Usman Bashir answered on 19 Jun 2015:
It can be a love / hate relationship for anything you badly want to learn and is proving too difficult to learn. You sometimes learn 1 line a day, and sometimes nothing at all. And you hate it for being so hard. For me that’s wavelet theory these days .. Aaaargh!
The principle of science, the scientific method, is something I love fully though!
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James Gilbert answered on 19 Jun 2015:
There are days when you feel like you’re getting no closer to your goal, and that can be really difficult. Sometimes you have to accept that you just put a lot of time into something that isn’t true or won’t work!
Also, if you want to be an academic researcher at a university, it can be difficult to get a permanent job – most of the time you have contracts that last maybe three years at a time. It can be competitive. I don’t like that aspect, but there are plenty of other places a scientist can work than a university! 🙂
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Freya Wilson answered on 19 Jun 2015:
I find the writing up side of things quite hard and the formidable task of starting to write is horrible! But once you get stuck in it is OK.
If you are stuck on something and nothing seems to be getting any clearer that can be horrendous, but then the elation when you finally figure it out is incredible. I think there are lots of up and downs!
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Daniel Hewson answered on 22 Jun 2015:
The tediousness of collecting data can be the worst, especially if the equipment is fiddly and takes a long time to set up and if things go wrong that means starting all over again. Doesn’t often happen but when it does it’s soul destroying!
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Miranda Jackson answered on 22 Jun 2015:
I love pretty much everything there is about science and the pursuit of knowledge, even the tedious stuff, but I do not particularly like how difficult it is to build a career, even after several years of higher education.
Comments
Usman commented on :
Just reading on those answers, cant help but agree with the truth in all of them. (Students) read them all please, different people will find different aspects harder but they are definitely the 4 or 5 most challenging aspects of a scientific career in my opinion! Upvoting the asker.