• Question: What's the main thing that you'd like to find out or achieve before you retire?

    Asked by 449tema46 to Kate, Joe, Jos, Lisa, Pierre on 10 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by The Dark Lord Dianite, niamhyy_bratzz_barbie_disney.
    • Photo: Kate Dobson

      Kate Dobson answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I’m not sure a scientist ever really retires…. from my experience people may stop working but they still like to workout how things work. I would like to be able to say that my work made a difference. Very corny I know, but what I do doesn’t directly save lives or help predict a volcano, but it helps improve the data we have and means our next predictions are better. I’d love to say that before I retire we will understand a volcano, and be able to predict what it will do and when, but I don’t think it will happen any time soon, we’ll just have found new questions to answer

    • Photo: Lisa Simmons

      Lisa Simmons answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I doubt I’ll ever truly retire. Even when I can’t teach anymore and I have to move on to allow new people to become lecturers I hope that I’ll still be allowed to work on my research and mentor younger academics.

Comments

  • Photo: 449tema46

    449tema46 commented on :

    Ok, thank you so much for your answers. I love the fact that most scientists never really retire because I would love to go into a career where I could work for years trying to reach a target and then maybe even exceeding that target and finding out even more than planned. Good luck to you both in the future.