• Question: Whats the worst part of your job?

    Asked by green to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 9 Jun 2011:

      In the lab when I react two chemicals in a hope to get my desired product, I often get what I want but I also get side products (undesired ones). And the worst part of my job is to separate them. I separate them by a technique called chromatography (which is like a sophisticated sieve).

      Now I say this is the worst part of my job because we need to purify each and every reaction that we perform. I do up to 10 reactions a week so that means that many purifications per week. Also, more often than not there are many side products but only one desired compound and I am not able to tell which is my desired compound till I separate them all and analyse each one separately.

      If someone were to build an economical machine to do this job for me, I would finish my PhD in half the time!

    • Photo: Aimé Fournier

      Aimé Fournier answered on 9 Jun 2011:

      Science uses mostly taxpayer money (not a lot, compared to building tanks or something) but scientists often have to spend a lot of time justifying our costs. That would be fine except for two things. A lot of science has huge unpredictable benefits (e.g., quantum mechanics led to transistors), and science is often judged not only on its technical merit (although that’s the main criterion) but also partly on emotional/political/psychological grounds (like any other activity). It’s an imperfect world we live in.

    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 9 Jun 2011:

      The fact that nothing ever seems to work! The cells I’m growing keep getting infected with bacteria, and even if I manage to keep them germ-free they don’t seem to be working the way I expected them to. Still, as everyone keeps telling me, that’s science!

    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      I’ve really only just started my PhD and the worst part for me so far is trying to juggle everything to get work done! since I do reactions on equipment, experiments in the lab, I have to analyse results and sort general office work, but fitting everything into the day is pretty tricky and really difficult at first… think iv got the hang of it better now tho

    • Photo: Diana Samuel

      Diana Samuel answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Oh, definitely ‘feeding time’ for the frogs. We feed them live crickets. Aside from being icky (can’t think of a scientific equivalent for that term) and hard to catch, they’re escape artists; inevitably, one or two will make it out the door and be caught wandering around in a lab at the other end of the corridor!

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