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Asked by anon-380595 on 8 Feb 2024. This question was also asked by seat1vet.
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Martin McCoustra answered on 8 Feb 2024:
The hardest part is getting motivated to do administrative work. If have no problem engaging in research related actvities or delivering my teaching but I find administration tiresome and in some aspects unnecessary.
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Michael Schubert answered on 8 Feb 2024:
My schedule and workload vary quite a lot, so sometimes I very suddenly find myself with a lot of work and not very much time to do it in. Then I have to work very hard and put in very long hours to get back to where I should be. That can be tough, because I am a person who likes to be able to plan and organise everything in advance!
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Erin Pallott answered on 8 Feb 2024:
I think being productive and efficient with my time is the hardest part. My only deadline is my thesis submission, which is still nearly 2 years away. I have to make sure I make good use of my time every day, but its very easy to become distracted.
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Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 8 Feb 2024:
To do admin jobs associated with the work as it consumes a lot of time!
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Amber Villegas - Williamson answered on 9 Feb 2024:
Getting up early and dealing with jetlag
Depending on which time zone I’m working with I sometimes have to start working early. This week I’m working remotely with people in KSA (Saudi Arabia) and we are starting at 9am everyday…but that’s their time which is 6am in UK. We are also on video camera for our meetings so I need to shower/get ready before we start so this week I have been getting up at 4:30am !!!!!
It does mean however that I finish early so my work day has ended at lunchtime. -
David Bremner answered on 9 Feb 2024:
Because i have an hour to travel to get to work and the people who participate in our studies all want to or need to come in quite early, i start my day by getting up around 0430. This is even harder in the winter months when it’s cold and dark.
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Alexander De Bruin answered on 9 Feb 2024:
finding the right balance between paperwork, managing and motivating the team, getting the right information for making decisions, and writing reports / making presentations on what’s been happening
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Alberto Granero answered on 9 Feb 2024:
Not having complete information when I have to take a decision. Oftentimes we need to make a choice not knowing all the potential outcomes. However, as hard as it was the first time, it gets easier to be comfortable on making such decisions.
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David McGonigle answered on 11 Feb 2024:
Similarly to most people…if you work in a university research environment, you need to do a lot of paperwork. A LOT of paperwork…
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Karen Adler answered on 11 Feb 2024:
The hardest part of doing research is that sometimes science does what it wants!! You expect an experiment to work a certain way and give certain results…. but sometimes we just don’t know enough about what we are doing and surprise! you don’t even know what the results mean. It’s like counting fingers and getting to 6… what?! why?! how?! Sometimes it’s a mistake, sometimes something is wrong with the materials you used (too old, got contaminated, something like that), and sometimes it’s SCIENCE. Can be a bit frustrating sometimes!
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Lisa Russell answered on 12 Feb 2024:
Whilst I am always busy with many different tasks to complete, there are times when all the deadlines come at once! This can be tricky to navigate and I can end up working longer than I would like as I have a family life to juggle as well.
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Mark Eyles answered on 12 Feb 2024:
Stopping would be one of them. I really enjoy what I do so finding the right time to shut the shop is one of the most challenging things. Very important to find the down-time though, we all need that to recharge.
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Julie-Ann Hori answered on 12 Feb 2024:
The hardest thing about my job is seeing some of the worst things that people can do to other people and realising human nature can be terrible.
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Kirsty Ross answered on 15 Feb 2024:
Trying to not take on too much by saying yes to everything! I need to learn to pace myself.
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Marianne Morris answered on 16 Feb 2024:
I think the hardest part can sometimes be communicating technical / scientific concepts to other (non-technical) colleagues in the business in a clear and accessible way. There are always multiple factors that influence decisions being made in project management – time/cost often being the main ones – and sometimes it’s really important that the technical requirements are taken seriously and not dismissed or played down. I spend a lot of time trying to communicate technical matters in as brief and simple a way as possible to make sure the right decisions are made – it can be tricky!
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