• Question: Do you ever get bored of Physics and think about completely giving up on it?

    Asked by Olivia to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 9 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I have been there, although the main reason to stop working in physics was to be able to live with my wife. Now that I am back in science I hope to stay for good but life is never as simple and straightforward as we would like.

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I get more fed up than bored and yeah sometimes I feel like giving up, but I think most jobs are like that. You can love your job but still have off days. For me, sometimes things don’t go right and I get a bit stuck with my research… but you just have to stick at it and in the end it all works out! I think its good to have lots of hobbies so you don’t get worn down by just doing the same thing all the time – that really helps me!

    • Photo: Vicky Bayliss

      Vicky Bayliss answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Some days at work I get bored – especially if doing a task is taking a really long time and I have to sit at my computer and focus on it when I would prefer to be running around in the sunshine. But when I think about it on a bigger scale, I’m not sure there is anything I’d rather be doing. Like Jaclyn says – I think most jobs are going to be boring some days.

      My mum in one of her finer moments, once said to me that work was called work, because sometimes it is hard work…

    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Only on days ending in ‘y’.

      For reals though, as Vicky and Jaclyn said, some days you want to sack it all in, but every job gets that way occasionally. I usually think about going back to my old job as a furniture removals man! Often though, you just need to stick with it a bit longer and push through the difficult bit.

      Case in point: on Wednesday I finished the code I’d been working on for 6 months, on Thursday it didn’t work and I had no idea why. It was driving me mad! Then, right before lunch on Friday, I remembered a problem I’d forgotten to fix in one of my functions and after 6 months development, I have the first building block in my PhD project! Imagine if I’d quit Friday morning?

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