• Question: What personality traits have helped you the most?

    Asked by anon-226089 to Sameed, Jose, joannabarstow, Heidi, Freya on 9 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Heidi

      Heidi answered on 9 Nov 2019:

      I think one of the most important personality traits of a scientist is not giving up! Sometimes science can be hard, or you’ll have to work long hours, but it’s so rewarding when you manage to make a discovery, or you understand an equation. 🙂

      Other personality traits that are really great are things like team work and communicating. Scientists don’t just work alone, we work in teams, so you can imagine that it’s good to be able to get along with others and share your ideas well!

    • Photo: Joanna Barstow

      Joanna Barstow answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      I’m quite persistent and don’t give up very easily. I think that’s a useful trait to have as a scientist, because things often don’t work the first time, so you have to try different approaches.

    • Photo: Freya Addison

      Freya Addison answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Enthusiasm, perseverance and teamwork. I love my job, and I really enjoy talking about my subject, and other aspects of science, and this really shows in job interviews and talks. In science, experiments, fieldwork, code, there is so much which goes wrong, all the time. You have to keep at it and keep going. Getting a bad grade in a test, won’t stop you if you want to keep going, and the same is when something goes wrong in the lab. Also I am at the beginning stages of an academic career, getting constructive feedback on the work that I have badly written, is really important, you have to be able to take a knock and get back on the horse and try again. The great thing about science is that it is a shared space. You work with a lot of different people at different stages in your and their careers. You get to know people very well when you have been away on fieldwork together, or stuck in the lab repeating the same experiment over and over. I have learnt so much from being around my colleagues, and I make sure that when they have questions too, I am there to answer them. Just by talking to people I got to do a mini project at two different labs. My supervisor was talking to someone in a completely different department and now they have this massive grant and project which they are doing together.

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