I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Cahlahm98 this is a good question – I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve given up on the science itself. I have been in a situation in my job where I had to take time out because of a particuarly difficult couple of cases I had to handle over a couple of weeks on call (first one was a call in the middle of the night because there had been a car accident and they needed blood for transfusion and when I got there the patients were friends of mine returning from a party I was meant to be at, and the second was diagnosing leukaemia in a 12 month old child who was a close friend).
These sorts of cases don’t happen often, I was just unlucky they occured so close together when I was working in a lab where ther other scientist was on holidays so I was alone. Luckily the company I was working for at the time supported me and sent someone up from Sydney to work in the lab so I could take some time off and get away.
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I’ve never given up on science entirely, but as with any jobs, there can be bad days. The days of the Ph.D., especially, can be long, hard, and low-paying. They come with great rewards, too, but sometimes it’s hard to go on. In the middle of my Ph.D., I had to move back home because a family member became sick. Trying to focus on the science that I was doing while I was 3000 km away from my lab and taking care of my family was really hard. In truth, that’s probably the closest I’ve come to quitting. But, I stuck it through, and I love my job!
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Dear Cahlahm; Yes I experienced it. When myself and my husband were both in graduate school we had our first son. We didn’t have enough money to support the family, we didn’t have time to take care of the baby. My research project required me to start from 8 o’clock in the morning to pick up kidneys from the slaughter house, make microvilli, then go on to the calcium transport study with the freshly prepared microvilli vesicles. The experiment was finished around 4 o’clock in the morning. It went on like that almost a month. On the way home watching the dawning sky I seriously wondered what I am doing. I wanted to quit it for my son. I did continue and the transport study was over and I finished the Ph.D. successfully. First I did want to give up on science for my child but at the same time I didn’t want to give it up for my child. I didn’t want to leave a bad example for him.
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This is a really important issue for a lot of jobs, not just science!
I don’t think I’ve ever given up on science, but I’ve certainly had times where I’ve had to take a break and do something else for a while. You can get burnout the same thing every day, so taking a break gives you a chance to have some other experiences, and then you can come back as enthusiastic as ever. Just like students need a break over summer to recharge their batteries, so do scientists!
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WAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..sorry, you made me laugh. Yes many times. Especially during my PhD, and almost any PhD student will go through at least mental break downs and wanting to quit.
I think as with any job, or even high school, you get bad days where you just want to give up and go home. With my type of science, we often do experiments which can take 2 or 3 days and if by the end of it you found out it didn’t work, you get really cranky.
But in the end, to keep going even after a bad day, a bad week or a bad month only makes you stronger!
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