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Asked by anon-187777 to Stewart, Miriam, Laura, Kathryn, David on 14 Nov 2018.
Question: What was the most difficult thing you did in your jobs?
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David Ho answered on 14 Nov 2018:
I think one of the most difficult things to do is to balance all my time productively. In a given week I’ll have a lot of calculations and computations to do, and I need to find time to read scientific papers, to meet with my supervisor and other scientists, to attend talks and discussions, and to do my teaching work. Finding time to do everything is a bit like juggling whilst on a tightrope, but hopefully I’m not dropping too many balls at the moment! I also really enjoy it, even though it can be a bit hectic sometimes!
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Miriam Hogg answered on 14 Nov 2018:
I think for me its working with other peoples code! There are many people who have written code to model things (like the formation of planets for example) and make it available for other scientists to use.
Some of these codes have taken years to develop and I only have 3 years to do my PhD so using these codes is pretty common in the scientific community. But trying to work out what someone else’s code is doing its a bit like knowing some French and the basic ideas behind sentences structure and then trying to decode a full length novel!
It can be frustrating and for me it is one of the more difficult things to do -
Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 15 Nov 2018:
Most difficult thing for me (but also really rewarding) was finishing my PhD. There were points towards the end where I didn’t think I would be able to finish it – it’s a 3 year research project which you write up into a long report (100 pages or more!).
With support from friends and family I made it through.
Beyond that, I regularly encounter difficult concepts in maths, physics and computing – I’ve learnt a few strategies for working these out, but each one is different.
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