• Question: what is your favourite thing about being a scientist?

    Asked by cook7r2 to Drew, Amy, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by boolisha, hannahmvnich, annelouise372, jamiebyr, eb99, shigamoo19, kaffwyn, shineangeline, brownolawd, corak954, lsloan662.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      My favorite thing is that when I’m interested in the answer to a question, it’s my job to go and find the answer. So often in other jobs, when you don’t know something, you don’t have time to find out.

      Me in another job: “Is this really the best way to do this task?”
      Boss: “It’s what the contract says we have to do. Shut up and do it”.

      Me as a scientist: “Is this really the best way to do this task? Hmm I wonder if anyone else has asked that before. Let me check it out. No they haven’t – how could I go about getting a good answer to that question? I know, I’ll get a group of people to do it one way, and a group of people to do it the other way, and see which group does best. Cool, now I can find out!”
      Boss: “That sounds good. Let’s put in a grant application to get money to do the experiment”.
      Friend at work: “What if one group is just naturally better – we need to tweak the experiment to rule out that explanation”
      Another friend: “And we could …”

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      My favourite thing is how flexible the hours are. I like that I don’t have to work 9am to 5pm, can have extended lunch breaks if I feel like it, can some days work from home. We also get to travel quite a lot to conferences, I am off to LA next week.

      It is also really exciting. You get a fantastic buzz out of knowing that you know something that right now noone else in the world knows 🙂

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Lots really,… I like investigating and problem solving the most.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Exciting results – changing the world!!! Discovering things that no one else knows! 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Discovery!! I love learning something new everyday, and just like Drew says its so cool to have your job be figuring stuff out. I get to spend my days talking to really cool people about stuff I find super interesting. And, like Kimberley I take advantage of flexible hours. You have to have a good work ethic, but you can basically work whenever you want. So somedays I sleep till noon, lounge around for a while and then start working when I feel like it! No 9-5 here =p Traveling is also really fun. I have a lot of conference friends I only see a few times a year when I travel. I was just in Montana with some of them and we had so much fun!!!

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