• Question: what is the hardest thing you had to do to become a scientist

    Asked by anon-250760 to Yewande, Tom, Oliver on 30 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 30 Mar 2020:

      I think the hardest thing I had to do was my PhD. It took me four years of study at university (I had already spent three years working for my first degree). A PhD is very different because you are working on a unique project, answering a question about nature that has never been solved previously. It is very exciting and interesting, but can also be quite lonely and worrying.

      My project was on how we learn new words. For example, if I say “perplisteronk” to you, you will probably be able to repeat it right back to me, but how does that happen? “Recording” and then repeating back the word must involve some changes being made in the connections between brain cells. But how do the brain cells represent the sounds we hear and the movements we make when we speak? We can make some good guesses based on the mistakes people make. For example, when they are remembering a new word, people often make spoonerisms, errors where they swap sounds around between different syllables. These happen in everyday speech (“You have tasted two worms!”), and they are similar but more common in memory for new words (“plerpisteronk”).

      So my computer model tried to explain this pattern. It was very hard, and took me about one and a half years to come up with a good idea – I spent most of that time having bad ideas that didn’t explain anything. I started to get worried it would never work, and that I would never finish. I was so anxious I felt I couldn’t go to work, and I had to see a counsellor my doctor for help with the anxiety. It felt rather like a mental marathon; I had to find the will to keep going even though I really wanted to stop.

      Somehow in the end I finished, an I was very proud of what I achieved.

Comments

  • Photo: katiesparks

    katiesparks commented on :

    Mine was more a confidence thing. My family aren’t sciencey (or academic), so doing A levels and going to uni was both really exciting and somewhat scary.
    It also meant that I often felt out of my depth. That said, I think everyone feels like that about something at some point and that’s ok.
    I’ve definitely had some really challenging things that I’ve worked on, but actually, aside from exams at school, there is very little that you will do that you do just on your own. You’ll be part of a team and you’ll have different ways to look up things you don’t know and speak to people who will help you along the way. On the other side of that, you’ll also help other people on their way!

  • Photo: Jennifer

    Jennifer commented on :

    I think the hardest thing for me has been something called “imposter syndrome” where you feel that everyone else is really really smart and they let you have your job by accident because they didn’t realise that you were dumb!
    I have a really smart friend who is an engineer and she came to my house one day and was explaining electricity and the national power grid and kilowatt hours and everything. I was thinking wow she’s so smart, and then she realised that I was carrying on a technical conversation with her and making a pie at the same time. She couldn’t believe it because she finds cooking really difficult and has to concentrate. Because I make things all the time in a laboratory for my chemistry job cooking is really easy! Then I realised that actually we all have completely different skills and abilities and that we need to value that. I still get imposter syndrome, but I find it easier to deal with now.