• Question: What inspires you to do the job

    Asked by oliverjelley to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 15 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 13 Mar 2011:

      Great question! I think it’s really important to remember why we do what we do 🙂

      There’s a couple of different things really. Firstly I always wanted to do something that helped other people, I always thought that would be something like a doctor or nurse, but then I found I could do science and enjoyed working in the lab to help understand different diseases that can effect peoples lives. One of my first research projects was understanding why stem cells are important in placental development. If babies don’t form a good placenta they won’t grow properly. Meeting parents who had had ill babies or even experienced the loss of a child and had then donated money to fund my work was incredibly inspirational and kept me motivated at even the toughest times.

      The second thing is meeting young people at school or college who are enthused about science- your enthusiasm actually inspires me to do as good a job as I can, so the next people who come and work on my area of research have a great starting point to work from! Other people’s enthusiasm really gives me a massive boost and reminds me how lucky I am to do this job!

    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 13 Mar 2011:

      Hi Oliverjelly,
      I’m inspired by the thought that the work I do will be able to help people in the future that are ill.
      Even very small scientific discoveries are important as when you add up all those small discoveries and idea that all the scientists in the world are coming up with, thats pretty amazing and huge. Scientists in the past have come up with amazing things and it’s a good feeling to be considered as a scientist.

      On a personal level, I’ve sadly lost several close familty members to cancer and thinking that I might be helping find new treatments for cancer inspires me greatly.

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      That is a very good question. I guess like anyone I go through periods of not being very inspired with my PhD, sometimes it just feels like hanging on for the next year and a bit until it’s finished! It’s not all bad though, most of the time I get flashes of inspiration, or I go and spend time doing outreach work and talking to scientists and realise that the whole stem cell field is actually very exciting, and even to be a tiny part of that makes it all worth while.
      I think even more important though is what didn’t inspire me to stay in the lab, I did a year in industry and didn’t really enjoy it. It made me realise that I just wasn’t dedicated enough to a particular subject to do lab work, all I was really interested in was talking to people and the ethical/regulatory side of things. I’m so glad I realised that early on. I do still get a bit jealous when I see friends doing ‘proper’ science, but then I see them working on weekends and realise I wouldn’t have the dedication to do that.

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi oli,
      what inspires me is the possibility to help people. science can often be like a cliff hanger.. kind of like when you’ve completed a level on Halo or whatever computer game you play and you can’t wait to get onto the next level.. if you have a cool result that might mean something important, you want to get on and test it and see whether it works again, or whether you can solve the next part of the puzzle.. you’ve got to be optimistic though, cos it you don’t feel like you are going to make any progress, you might as well not turn on that console!

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