Question: What is your favourite thing about being a scientist?Also, have you ever faced any very difficult challenges that made you question yourself about being a scientist?

Wilhelmiina Toivo answered on 8 Mar 2017:

I really enjoy the freedom you have – you get to plan your days yourself. Also discovering new things is great and it satisfies my curious mind 🙂 On a more everyday level I really like testing participants and chatting with them. My participants come from all over the world so they have really interesting experiences and stories to share.

I face difficulties every day, but that’s also what keeps it interesting, you keep pushing your limits and get challenged every day! It’s a great feeling when you manage to solve a problem. Last year I did doubt my career choice – I did an experiment for 9 months, put my heart and soul into it and we didn’t find anything. It was really frustrating, and I was quite annoyed. But this is how science sometimes works, you need to try things out, and then you know which parts to improve. We are running the same experiment now, with some improved parts so I really hope it works this time!