• Question: how easy is your work

    Asked by Christy to Sarah, James, Dawn on 14 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Diamonds and gold??.
    • Photo: Sarah Hampson

      Sarah Hampson answered on 14 Nov 2016:


      It varies- some work I’d describe as easy- things like taking photos on my microscope, washing my chips, or ordering in chemicals.
      We had a 16 year old do work experience here and she actually ran some experiments with me and survived, so I don’t think my work’s that bad!

      Other stuff I have to do can be tricky. Sometimes a microchip won’t work and I’ll spend days running experiments (plus doing lots of thinking) to try to work out why. Or an experiment might be fiddly to do because the things I work with are so small and delicate. But work is more rewarding when it’s challenging!

    • Photo: Dawn Gillies

      Dawn Gillies answered on 14 Nov 2016:


      It depends what I’m doing. Some things are really easy – like running my experiments, reading up on related work that other people are doing, looking at cells on the microscope.

      Other things are a lot harder. Setting up an experiment so it runs well can be tough, and coding is very tough! I’ve just had to spend quite a long time today trying to find one small microbead in a solution of LOADS of them (about a fifth of a millimetre in size!) to image! But now that I’ve found it, it’s very easy to run my experiment.

      Coming up with new ideas can be challenging too, but that’s what’s so much fun!

    • Photo: James Clarke

      James Clarke answered on 17 Nov 2016:


      It’s slowly becoming easier as I understand my work more, but when I started everything seemed really difficult! It felt like everyone around me was so much smarter.

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