• Question: Although science is extremely interesting and there's a broad width of topics and matters to be investigated and explored; how do you keep yourselves motivated or perhaps 'get a kick out of' your everyday jobs?

    Asked by rohitmkiller to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 16 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Great question.

      Sometimes it can be hard to use the “bigger picture” as your day-to-day motivation, even if that big picture is really interesting and important.

      On a day-to-day level I try to break down what I’m working on into small parts. So perhaps in a day I’ll set myself the task of writing a computer program which calculates something, or of writing a talk or planning a paper etc…

      That way you can see progress even if you’re not producing big results. For me, that’s important! I know other people who are happy to keep slogging away at the same problem for days but I tend to have a shorter attention span and easily get bored, so I make sure that I have lots of things to do and lots of variety.

      My colleagues are fun to work with as well, and they are really interesting which helps keep me motivated. Some of the I’m a Scientist questions have already worked their way into our lunchtime conversations!

      Often though I like to do things like “I’m a Scientist” or going to visit schools to talk about my work in order to remind myself of why I’m doing the science I’m doing. You guys have so much energy and enthusiasm I can’t help but feel motivated to keep working!

      But the MOST IMPORTANT thing to do is to make sure to take breaks and to give yourself a holiday occasionally! It’s important to have a life outside your job, no matter how much you love your job 🙂

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Great question! Sometimes I feel bad because I’m not ‘saving the world’ like a doctor but actually the work we do is really important in terms of space discoveries and for humankind.
      My motivations come from thinking “wow, this data is all the way from Saturn!” 🙂 It took the Cassini spacecraft 7 years to get there, but the data comes back on a daily basis. What an amazing feat!
      I also love telling people what I do and hearing their reaction. Sometimes they run away but a lot of the time they are like “wow cool!” and that certainly gives me a kick.
      Having a cool job is way more interesting than having a normal job!

    • Photo: Geoff McBride

      Geoff McBride answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Every job has boring bits. Today I had to sit through a 2 hour meeting on finance. But yesterday and this morning I was talking with other scientists [and an astronaut] on how to get the UK involved with micro-gravity experiments. There’s good bits all the time.

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      A good point – like every other job, there are some days where you have to do something you might particularly want to do – I personally don’t like doing anything with magnetics or filling in forms! But there are so many opportunities in science, to do things – for example participate in events like this and talk to you guys, because it is interesting to get your opinions – and your opinions do matter because you are all the future! You have lots of opportunities to travel all over the world, talk to some of the most intellegent people on the planet…you come up with ideas that could change mankind even!

      I’m not lying when I say some days I can’t wait to get to work to do some proper experimental science!

Comments

  • Photo: rohitmkiller

    rohitmkiller commented on :

    That’s wicked, thanks – that’s really quite motivating because I’m interested in getting into Physics at a higher level.
    Thank you Suzie and Sheila because I aspire to be scientists like you one day 🙂 and it just seems that what you’ve said is exactly what Space research is all about – something exciting!