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Asked by Elise on 5 Feb 2024. This question was also asked by prey1met, gate1sap, Ben.
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Rachel Edwards answered on 5 Feb 2024:
Sometimes – there are boring bits in every job. But being a scientist can be really variable, so I know that if one day my tasks are a little bit boring, the next day will be much more interesting. Overall I’m a lot happier with my job than my friends who went into more standard jobs.
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Andrew McDowall answered on 5 Feb 2024:
My own situation matches Rachel’s very nicely, with the possible exception that I do have one friend who, although she has a very conventional job in project management having left science, works for the Civil Service, so has an endless stream of comic absurdities to keep her (and us, her friends) amused or horrified.
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Mark Eyles answered on 5 Feb 2024:
Honestly… not very often but of course sometimes a repetitive task can be a bit boring; I guess that’s just the way it goes though.
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Sharron Kenny answered on 5 Feb 2024:
erm…. no but i much prefer working in the lab on samples than the paperwork you need to have in place to run a lab. when im writing up a new risk assesment or COSHH or methods. its never quite as exciting as actually doing it.
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Zoe Vance answered on 5 Feb 2024:
Sometimes! I don’t think any job is missing a few boring tasks – there’s paperwork to do everywhere. And some days I probably find tasks I normally enjoy like coding boring, usually because I’ve been staring at the same problem for too long. But I usually have more than one project to work on at once so it’s easy to bounce on to something else and come back.
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Erin Pallott answered on 5 Feb 2024:
There are parts of my job that are boring, but I’m not bored of the whole job. Being a research involves many types of tasks like reading papers, writing reports, analysing data and doing experiments. I love writing, but find reading lots of papers a bit boring sometimes!
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Martin McCoustra answered on 5 Feb 2024:
I’ll be honest there are times when I get bored… Usually this is when something isn’t going well in the laboratory or I’m having to do paperwork that I think is not necessary. Most of the time, however, that doesn’t happen and I enjoy what I’m doing.
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Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 5 Feb 2024:
Never 🙂 I love what I do and I thoroughly enjoy it. My job relates to discovering new medicines and identifying drug-resistant bacteria so in short I am working on saving lives of people who would otherwise die as a results of infectious diseases 🙂
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David Bremner answered on 6 Feb 2024:
No two days are ever the same so with such variety being bored is uncommon.
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Alexander De Bruin answered on 6 Feb 2024:
as others have said, there are times that I’m a little bored especially during some of the more tedious paperwork, but those moments are relatively rare.
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Kirsty Lindsay answered on 6 Feb 2024:
Yep, sometimes, normally about half way though a large set of data that needs organised!
Lots of experiments need you to repeat the same actions, exactly the same way, over and over again. Sometimes 100s of times, even in human research. So that can get a little tedious, but it’s important for the results that we don’t change anything except what we want to study.
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Hannah Fawcett answered on 6 Feb 2024:
Some aspects are definitely more exciting than others! Data entry – putting scores from questionnaires into a spreadsheet – can be quite dull. Marking dozens of the same essays can also get quite repetitive. The good thing about being a psychologist in a university though is that there is a huge variety of work so the more boring tasks can be mixed in between the fun ones!
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Karen Edwards answered on 6 Feb 2024:
I have definitely gotten bored with past jobs but luckily while I sometimes have boring days, I haven’t gotten bored with my current job even after more than 10 years! Boring days are nice once in a while as they give me time to think and regroup.
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Lydia Eeles answered on 6 Feb 2024:
I do get very bored with my current job. Honestly, pharmaceutical research is not something that I ever intended to get into, and just sort of fell into this style of role during the pandemic.
I much prefered my previous research roles that were in accademia, but they had their own challenges. -
Chigozie Onuba answered on 7 Feb 2024:
No boring moment in my job because every day is different and you often see interesting cases.
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Kip Heath answered on 7 Feb 2024:
Sometimes. Every job involves a certain amount of doing the same thing over and over again and sometimes you just don’t want to. But that’s not just science, that’s any job.
But I have a career that I like, and on balance is better than doing anything else!
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Kirsty Ross answered on 7 Feb 2024:
Sometimes. If I have to do data entry (like adding numbers to a spreadsheet) then I really struggle. I am neurospicy (dyslexia) and such boring tasks almost physically hurt to do. Fortunately I don’t need to do them very often.
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Michael Schubert answered on 7 Feb 2024:
I never get bored of my work in science and science communication and I don’t think I would trade this job for another one! But that doesn’t mean there are no boring parts; I think every job has those. For instance, some days have more paperwork than others and paperwork is not the most fun!
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Jonathan Shaw answered on 8 Feb 2024: last edited 8 Feb 2024 9:29 pm
Having a job role like mine means I get to switch between being at my desk or being in the lab conducting experiments.
The colleagues I work with make my day interesting and the extra activities you can do on top of your job role (like this!) can also add to making each day somewhat different.
There are definitely some tasks that aren’t the most fun (such as data entry). But it’s fun to try think of solutions to make those tasks more efficient if possible.
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Clara Ferreira answered on 15 Feb 2024:
Yes!
The fact that I have lots of jobs is exactly because I get bored with one of them from time to time, so I just switch. -
Ravindu Ranaweera answered on 8 Mar 2024:
Yes. Your job will have exciting and repetitive boring tasks. It is especially frustrating when you have a lot of interesting work to do but you are required to complete the boring tasks before you can get to those. I try my best to automate what ever I can.
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Isabelle Luk Hang answered on 15 Mar 2024:
I love challenge every time and there won’t be always something new to solve or to do thus I can get bored easily.
When this happen I usually try to learn a new technology or do some certification to keep me busy. -
Amy Stockwell answered on 15 Mar 2024:
Like everyone else has answered, we are human. Even the most exciting thing becomes boring if you do it all the time.
I am lucky that there is lots of variety in my job, so boredom is rare, but when I’m sorting out paperwork I do get bored.
Comments
Martin M commented on :
Everyone gets bored now and again… I generally don’t like doing adminstrative work as I find it boring.
Amy commented on :
I’m human, so yes occasionally I get bored. Normally it is with admin work, but if I’ve been writing a report for some time, I have to give myself breaks and plan in some more interesting work.