Question: Is science a hard job to do ?

Elizabeth Ratcliffe answered on 19 Mar 2014:

Hi savannah123, I really enjoy my job but it can be quite hard sometimes, it does take hard work to become a scientist and stick at it but it’s all about finding science you enjoy. There are lots of types of science jobs and lots of entry levels – with or without a University degree.
Also there are parts of the job that are harder than others and this can be different for different scientists. For example I like designing and doing experiments, but sometimes my larger experiments can be physically tough to get through – this makes it a real achievement when I get the results. Writing applications for money to continue my work can be hard and very stressful and requires a lot of coordination with other scientists and companies, but this is how I do the work that I’m interested in and essentially I sort of get to work for myself a bit like an entrepreneur – some one who works for them-self discovering or designing something new – in my case this is new technology and scientific discoveries.
Above all of this my work is aimed at incurable diseases so I always have the patients in mind – personally this keeps me focused when things get hard, and I always find that when I’ve got through the hard stuff it wasn’t as bad as I thought…do you find this when doing exams at school? have you got something you can focus on?