• Question: Have there been times when you wanted to quit your jobs and move on to something else

    Asked by AliceCross to Vaanu, Tomas, Sylvain, Sarah, James, Dawn on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Sarah Hampson

      Sarah Hampson answered on 7 Nov 2016:


      About 2-3 times during the 2 years I’ve done this job I’ve thought “ARRRRRRRRRGH!!! WHY AM I HERE >:(” & thought about quitting- but only for like a few minutes.

      It can be hard if your experiments keep failing (& I’ve had problems with my microchips that lasted weeks on end), but if this happens I always try to think about how my research could help people in the future, and have that in my mind as my goal

    • Photo: Dawn Gillies

      Dawn Gillies answered on 8 Nov 2016:


      Occasionally when none of my experiments have worked and I’m not getting any useful results, but I just have to remind myself of what it’s all for and I get straight back to work!

      In those occasional moments though, I have absolutely no idea what else I’d do… I love bioengineering!

    • Photo: Sylvain Jamais

      Sylvain Jamais answered on 8 Nov 2016:


      I’ve left my last job, it was engineering too, but there was a sense of repetition between one project and the next, not enough variety for me and the career progress prospects were not great, so I got myself another engineering job, lot more variety, fun place to work, been 4.5 years, never looked back… so the message is that yes engineering is great in general but not all companies are equal and people should look around to find their best fit.

    • Photo: Vaanathi Sundaresan

      Vaanathi Sundaresan answered on 8 Nov 2016:


      Yes! been there, done that. After my undergrad I thought I wanted to go to software consultancy. So I joined in a company but later I realised that I am just wasting my resources and letting my brain rust. There was no room for innovation. So I quit my job and did my masters by research in biomedical imaging. After masters I thought, probably now I am ready to get into industry. So got into multimedia industry – not even 2 months.There was no point in most of the products they develop. So again comeback for DPhil. Now I think academic research wth clinical applications would of utmost interest to me. If I collaborate with industry, it will be for developing new equipments, not for programming useless fancy apps.

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