• Question: what is it like to be as a scientist

    Asked by anon-347634 to Ollie, Matthew, Aida on 3 Feb 2023. This question was also asked by anon-347669.
    • Photo: Aida Rodrigo

      Aida Rodrigo answered on 3 Feb 2023:

      Being a scientist is… fun! It is also hard work. Our job is to find out what nobody else is the world knows, so that’s going to be hard! 🙂 The rewards of being a scientist are incredible, though: the moment you see or understanding something that nobody else saw or understood before is… like nothing else! Being a scientist is also being a little bit of a writer, a speaker, a manager, a cheerleader, a mentor, a teacher, a student, a colleague.

    • Photo: Ollie Thomas

      Ollie Thomas answered on 7 Feb 2023: last edited 7 Feb 2023 8:33 am

      Being a scientist is really exciting, often fun, but also challenging. Because we are working on things that no one has done before we have to think very hard about everything we do, and we probably have things go wrong more often than any other job. I like having the freedom to decide what I am going to investigate and that the things I work on may one day have a positive impact on the world.

      There is a lot of variety in being a scientist. Some days I am in the lab, mixing powders and liquids to make new things. Some days I do lots of maths to try and understand what the things I have made are doing. On other days I spend writing, and reporting what I have discovered, and on others, I spend all day reading books trying to find out what people have done before. I also have to organise working with lots of other people/teams and tell people about the work I do so that I can find new people to work with and new ideas. So being a scientist is a bit like being a chef, mathematician, author, historian, organiser, teacher and presenter all in one!!!

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