Working in science

It's Sunday morning. What was a beautiful day a few hours ago, when I first opened the blinds, has turned into the usual grayish London day, and I've just realized I've been procrastinating for a few hours. So why not start the blog? At least that way I won't feel so guilty about not processing the images for my lab meeting in two weeks time (two weeks!).

I have to do a presentation on the work I am doing at my lab in the NIMR. I am a sandwich student there, and (as a scientist) it's an amazing place to work. Demanding, sure, but people are there for the science, they know what they're talking about and they are happy to explain even quite complex stuff.

I've learnt more in the past couple of months than in some modules at Imperial College, but that's the whole point of doing a year in research. You see what it's like to work in a real lab, you see what it's like to do research in the real world (as opposed to undergraduate labs, which are just a matter of following a protocol and are not at all creative).

My first conclusion after working for two months in a real lab is this: as much as I enjoy my job at times, I prefer my life as an undergraduate student. I like the flexible hours (the option of staying in bed when you really should be in lectures disappears the moment you have a job), the long holidays, the slight unawareness of the world of taxes. More than anything, I like the student atmosphere. PhD students and postdocs are people who have decided to dedicate their career to science, but sadly they are also people who are not fascinated by the idea of science anymore. I'm not saying they don't like science, and I'm not saying they are not at times fascinated by it, if they weren't they wouldn't be where they are, but they lack the absolute incredulity of undergrad students when they first understand something, or when they first hear of a technique that does exactly what they'd been thinking about. There are rarely conversations about the possibilities of something or other when you are working in research. These turn into more calm discussions, because by the time people go into research they are jaded. They have realized it is very unlikely that what they will do will make a big difference, that they probably will spend their whole lives working and producing huge amounts of data, but that, most likely, their work will not be recognized. They are still passionate about what they do, and, especially when they are explaining something, there is a glimmer of the undergraduate hunger for science as a whole, but generally, they are specialists in one area, and they don't think that much of it. It's a pity, but I guess it's difficult to maintain a high level of passion for something over ten years, especially when you're doing it every day. Especially when you realize it's a lot slower and a lot harder than you thought it was when you were sitting in your lecture theatre, daydreaming about organizing a house party on Saturday when really you should be listening to that explanation of transcriptional initiation mechanisms.

I guess what I'm saying here is that working is similar for everyone. Scientists are lucky in that once in while they get a result and it's perfect and it lights up what they have been trying to do for weeks, or months, or even years. But most days, it's grind of the mill, just like for everyone else. The difference is, these people who now don't seem that passionate about what they're doing are the exact same ones who could spend hours thinking about a subject back when they were undergraduates, the same ones who were awed by the simplicity of certain reasonings or proofs once they understood them. They went into science for that, and, even if it's just once every few weeks, or every few months, or every few years, they can have that feeling back, for a day or for a few days or for a month. For these people, that's more than enough.