• Question: what is the worst thing about your job?

    Asked by Emily to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 15 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Keith Franklin

      Keith Franklin answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      The worst thing about my job is coming into work in the morning and having 100 emails to read 🙁

      Because Japan is 9 hours ahead of the UK, all the emails people send me arrive overnight………….

      The best thing about my job is providing solutions to problems!

    • Photo: Natalie Garrett

      Natalie Garrett answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      I think the worst thing is when you’ve spent months preparing an experiment, reading about how other people have done similar things, working out how you’ll do it, setting everything up meticulously and then you get to the big day to try it out and… it doesn’t work. And you don’t know why.

      Research requires you to figure out why things haven’t worked the way you thought they would, but sometimes this is a very frustrating process to have to go through! Of course, when you figure the problem out and solve it, that is one of the best things about the job.

    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      There are bits I love about my job – finding out about the latest inventions and getting to be creative myself. Unfortunately, in between these things there are emails to get through, forms to fill in, some long meetings to attend, and so on. All this is essential but it’s not as fun. I think everyone wishes the balance was more the other way – more “doing their job” and less admin – but that’s the way of life!

      Clever new companies often try to find ways to get around these problems with ideas like ‘no email on a Thursday!’ or ‘no meetings more than 20 minutes’ – but whether or not this works depends on the type of work you do. Perhaps one of you students reading this will have some bright ideas…

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