What have you learnt from your job?

Question: What have you learnt from your job?
- Keywords:
  career,
  lessons,
  work
Asked by anon-340690 on 16 Nov 2022.
- Emily Southworth answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  I’ve learnt how much hard work goes into making new discoveries in cancer that have helped patients either beat it or live longer. There are so many hurdles you don’t think of until you’re doing the research yourself!
- Katie Pickup answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  The coolest thing I’ve learned to do is make my stem cells form lots of different cell types that are early stages of different body parts -sometimes they form a patch of heart cells which beat together in the dish!
  
  I’ve learned lots of other lab techniques and also general information about my research area through reading papers.
  
  But on a broader level I’ve learned a lot about being persistent and resilient, and how to get over setbacks as a lot of the time experiments don’t work! There are lots of other skills I have built on as well like writing, presentation skills, organisation, time management etc which are always useful skills to have in any job.
- Charlene Kay answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  I’ve learned that whilst progress can be slow in research (that is my biggest frustration), sometimes your discoveries really do lead to improvements in patient care. In my job I study breast cancer and some of the things we’ve found out in my lab have contributed to helping patients.
- Elly Stamp answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  I’ve learnt that scientists aren’t superhuman, like everyone else, we sometimes we get things wrong. We are just looking at what we already know and then try to do what we think is best based on that. Often we can have an incredible idea, make an amazing plan and it just doesn’t work. So, then we have to work out why it didn’t work, or we go back and come up with a new plan.
  Then other times you make a mistake, but something even better comes out of it.
  So, my job has taught me to just keeping trying!
  
  It’s also taught me how important it is to enjoy your job. It’s nice to be interested and care about the work you do each day. There is still so much about the world that we don’t know yet, and how exciting it can be to try and answer these problems.
- Matthew Swift answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned, that school doesn’t necessarily prepare you well for is that things can and will go wrong, but when they do how you respond is way more important than the actual mistake.
  
  As others have said you learn to be patient and resilient, sometimes in my PhD things wouldn’t work for months at a time but then you’d get a break through and it would be the best feeling ever.
  
  Probably the coolest thing I’ve learnt from my job is a compound we use to stimulate nerve cells in certain experiments called “Resiniferatoxin” is 1 million times hotter on the Scoville Scale (used to measure how hot chillis are) than the hottest chilli known.
  
  I wouldn’t recommend putting it on your food for extra spice!
- Sharon Madzorera answered on 16 Nov 2022:
  
  Wow. I have learned so much from my job, from how to treat others in the work place, to learning to appreciate small steps in progress. Sometimes we go big and things don’t work, but that failure and frustration drives me to be better, and I usually come up with great ideas after those difficult moments.
- Eddie Cano Gamez answered on 17 Nov 2022:
  
  I’ve learnt a lot of practical things for my job, such as how to program, how to analyse data, how to design and run experiments, etc…
  
  But I think the most valuable thing I have learnt is that science is way more complicated than what is taught to us at school: things that we take for granted are sometimes not entirely true, and there are always new things to learn and new perspectives to consider.
- Charli Corcoran answered on 22 Nov 2022:
  
  Probably the biggest skill I have developed from my job is problem solving and being able to change plans at the last minute. I’ve also learned a lot about working with different types of people, and about what kind of person I am in the professional environment.
- Mukta Deobagkar answered on 25 Nov 2022:
  
  Along with all the scientific knowledge and problem-solving skilles I have gained from doing my research job, I have also learnt that if I enjoy my work and find it interesting, I am much more enthusiastic and likely to do well.
  
  I have also learnt that things will often go wrong and that I will make mistakes. Sometimes I learn something new because of the mistake, make a new discovery; other times I must correct the error and move on. Scientific research can be very competitive but I have found support from colleagues and friends when I have remembered to ask for help.

Question: What have you learnt from your job?

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