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Asked by nadiyahill to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 22 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by jacob983, kane1, worldlife, bonny123, girl, liv99, animals, fraserdcandjam, whcatandcait, whchetandrob, whmegandnath.
Question: why did you pick your job that you now have and what did you have to overcome to get there?
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Michael Cook answered on 22 Jun 2012:
In my first week of being a Computing student, there was a lecture given by a PhD student. He walked into the room, and switched on two projectors, and suddenly all these windows started flashing up. He was typing very fast into them, and amazing things were happening – games appeared, complicated programs did awesome stuff. He knew so much stuff, and everything he talked about was so interesting. I really thought “Man, I would love to do what he does.”
I’m still friends with him today, and the joke is that he still knows way, way more than I ever will (he is an amazing, unbelievable computer scientist). But he inspired me to get into research and science, which is all that matters!
The hardest thing I had to overcome (and I still am doing it) is feeling very stupid! I know that sounds strange because scientists are supposed to be very clever, but the truth is that a lot of scientists often feel like they are the stupid one, and that one day everyone will find out and they’ll lose their job! It’s called “The Impostor Syndrome”, because you feel like you’re a fake!
That’s the hardest part, really. Every day I meet amazingly clever people, and every few months I’ll see this perfect piece of work someone did, and I’ll think “I hope no-one asks me what I do – it’s rubbish!” But if you try hard you can get over it. You have to think positive and remember that you got here because you worked hard!
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Blanka Sengerova answered on 24 Jun 2012:
When I was looking for my current job, I wanted to move into the area generally bounded by Bristol, Oxford, London and Southampton (ish) to fit in with where my boyfriend was working at the time. I was therefore looking at positions at universities and research institutes in the area as I still wanted to work in the lab as a scientist. I was looking at job adverts that were 1) appropriate for my skills that I acquired during my PhD (enzymology, protein purification, chemical assays etc.), 2) in the right location and 3) had interesting sounding projects.
To get the job, I needed to send a CV and covering letter first, was invited for an interview where I had to give a presentation about the work I had been doing so far and then talk to my potential job and a couple of other people from the department answering some questions about my motivation and abilities (some not unlike your questions in difficulty). I obviously did OK as I was offered the job!
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Emma Trantham answered on 26 Jun 2012:
I chose to do my PhD because I wanted the challenge of spending 3 years researching into something new and finding out things about the bacteria I work on that no one else knew already. I wanted to work with these particular bacteria because I am really interested in the diseases that can be passed from animals to humans and from humans to animals.
My first degree was a vet degree. On the vet degree we mostly did clinical microbiology (so studied the organisms that make animals sick) but we didn’t do much of the basic stuff about how bacteria grow and multiply, so actually the hardest thing about starting my PhD was that people would expect me to know some of this really quite basic stuff and I wouldn’t even have heard of it!
However, I also agree with Michael about “Impostor Syndrome”. There are many times I hear about other people’s work or see what they do and think ‘That’s amazing. My stuff is rubbish in comparison.’ You really do quite often feel like a fake. The important thing is to recognise that lots of scientists feel the same way and then hopefully you can get over it.
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