• Question: what is the hardest thing about your gob

    Asked by Chloe.m23 on 2 Mar 2021. This question was also asked by Sebastian, Orlad.
    • Photo: Alan Diaz

      Alan Diaz answered on 2 Mar 2021:

      The hardest thing about my work is to “learn things fast”.
      As a researcher, I try to solve problems for which there are usually no “one killer solutions”, thus I need to review (or investigate) what have other people done when trying to solve the problem that I am looking at and what have other people done when trying to solve “similar” problems. Consequently, if I want to solve my problems fast, I need to learn fast! Unfortunately that is a skill for which there is no real “short-cut” to acquire, the best thing I can do is to keep practicing as I do my job.

    • Photo: Miray Yasar

      Miray Yasar answered on 2 Mar 2021:

      If you can not explain the reasons of your test results, it would be the hardest thing to overcome.

    • Photo: Beth Macaulay

      Beth Macaulay answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      The hardest thing about being a research student is knowing what to do next after you get a result you didn’t expect. When that happens, you have to read a bunch of papers or book chapters written by other scientists and engineers that might help you figure out why you got that result, and then you have to use your brain to decide what to do next. This can take quite a long time. You can also ask your supervisors or colleagues for help, as they usually have more experience than you and can often point you in the right direction!

    • Photo: Helena Mylise Sorensen

      Helena Mylise Sorensen answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      Sometimes you can get results that are completely different from what you expected, and you just have no idea why your experiments turned out like that. Sometimes you can easily spot the mistake when you look back at your notes or it might simply be a technical issue. But sometimes you will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. However, being surrounded by brilliant researchers there is always someone to discuss it with, or I have my supervisors that can help point me in the right direction.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      I think I would call elements of the job challenging, rather than ‘hard’. Being challenged is a good thing! It keeps me on my toes and it means that my job is very exciting and certainly never boring! Because there is so much going on at any one time in my geographical area, it means it is challenging to ensure that everything is running smoothly. But this is part of the job and I always plan my work properly to make sure that all jobs are done properly and safely.

    • Photo: Hui Wang

      Hui Wang answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      I don’t think there’s the hardest thing about my job as difficult things are happening all the time. well, this is the interesting part too. you’ll never get bored. I would rather consider them as ‘challenging’ things, could be novel knowledge, various solutions didn’t work.

    • Photo: Jun Lin

      Jun Lin answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      I suppose the hardest thing is to get into a new area. Things will be difficult at the beginning when I have to learn new things that I am not familiar with. But that’s the most interesting part too if I think positively that I am learning new things!

    • Photo: Mubashir Husain Rehmani

      Mubashir Husain Rehmani answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      To keep myself up to date with technology.

    • Photo: Peter Megyesi

      Peter Megyesi answered on 3 Mar 2021: last edited 3 Mar 2021 11:45 am

      Letting go.

      There are so many new technologies/things to learn -> you need to filter them extensively and focus on the most important/relevant.

      There are so many times you think you are close to solving a problem but in fact you’re being really inefficient and are just making things worse -> you need to step back and do something else.

      There are so many cool ideas/projects/approaches that you would like to try -> you need to focus on what’s the most important for your team and only work on that.

      There are so many things that change rapidly around us -> you have to kill your babies. E.g. there might be a feature that you developed in an app. It’s awesome, you love it, but circumstances (or just the people using it) change and you’ll need to scrap it… It can hurt but you’ll need to let it go.

    • Photo: Alessandra Mileo

      Alessandra Mileo answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      There are so many interesting things I want to do, activities I would like to be involved, new things I would like to learn, it is hard to say no! The challenge is to decide what to do as we only have so many hours a day and can’t do everything.

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