There are plenty of aspects of my job that I really love. Among them is the tremendous variety in the tasks I do: field work, all different types of lab work, data analysis, reading, writing. I rarely have to do the same thing for more than a few weeks at a time, so I don't get tired of the things I enjoy and the things I dislike are mostly over before I know it. My favorite thing of all, however, is the thrill of inspiration.
I love it when a colleague or I have a new idea to discuss. That feeling of excitement and possibility that comes from seeing how the pieces can fit together to show you something new about nature. The daydreaming of how the experiments will go, what you'll learn from potential outcome A vs. outcome B, how you could build the story out of various pieces of literature, what journal it could go to. I really like going to conferences for many reasons, but a big one is that they so often inspire new ideas. The exposure to the latest research, expressed in a way that is much more lively that a journal article, combined with the opportunity to interact with the scientists presenting that research is so conducive to developing new ideas. I always come home chomping at the research bit.
At the other end of the spectrum, I really dislike the frustration of waiting for other people to do their parts. A couple of years ago I would have said that my least favorite aspect of my job is the guilt - of not working enough, working too much, whatever. Now my ire is much more practical. I just want to get shit done. There's still an element of guilt wrapped in this, though, because sometimes people are waiting on me to get my bit done and I feel bad when it takes longer than it should. And I feel bad for nagging people who I know are orders of magnitude busier than I am.
As I get more involved in the bench work necessary to my new field, I'll be curious to see how much my likes and dislikes might shift. I think the moments of inspiration will remain the best part, but I wonder if bench frustrations will surpass collaboration frustrations in my new, more sophisticated and finicky lab work.
4 comments:
I love your mention of the variable nature of your work, which is one thing I love about my work. And the inspiration and ideas! Yes! When that is really working well, is in some groove or in the zone, it's perfect and everything else can almost be ignored.
I hate depending on other people too. Unfortunately, it's a large part of my job - I can't edit text if people haven't sent me their text! Sometimes I think I'm too much of a control freak for this job :)
The variety is good though, like you said.
Glad things are going well for the most part!
I'm pretty much in the lab or at my bench. Any time people mention field work, I turn green with envy. I guess I shouldn't though since if I did do field work, it would probably involve a swab and an orifice.
SF, I'm not sure how anyone could not like the variety (although I'm sure they're out there).
Cath, it would drive me nuts having to wait for other people's text all the time! I don't know how you can stand it.
MXX, eeeew! I really enjoy field work, but much less than I enjoy the other parts of my job. I can do bench work or writing for weeks at a time without getting too sick of it, but I think field work becomes a drag after a few days.
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