• Question: What is it like to work in a lab?

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      I have only had jobs that we either lab based or office based. A lab is more fun than an office.

      Laboratories are very variable depending on what kind of work people are doing there. The main hospital laboratory is non-stop busy and bustling. The research laboratory is much quieter and calmer.

      I like laboratory work because it’s practical and you get to move around and do different things. I got really fed up when I sat in front of the same computer at the same desk every day.

    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 21 Jun 2014:

      I don’t work in a lab myself, as my background is in maths and I do my experiments on a computer. I work with people who do though, as that’s where my data on the computer comes from! I think it really depends on what you like to do – I know people that used to work in the lab and found it wasn’t for them, and people that don’t usually work in the lab, but leap at the chance to go have a go when they can. Either way, there’s lots of variety (even if I’m sat at the same desk, I work on lots of different things!), and you’ll probably be working as part of a larger group looking at various aspects of the same problem. I interact just as much with the lab people as I do the non-lab people, and both parts are important for the results.

    • Photo: Ramya Bhatia

      Ramya Bhatia answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      working in a lab is quite exciting. you get to move around a lot and do a lot of different experiments. There are also lots of different types of machinery we use in labs.

    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      It’s very different to any other job I have done that’s for sure. You have to walk around in a lab coat to protect your clothes from becoming contaminated with bugs you work on or the damage that certain chemicals could do. Eye protection is also important for the same reasons as before.

      Working in the lab can be a lot of fun as you set up and run experiments, whilst reading a paper that you hope will help you to fast track your research so you don’t have to spend hours developing a method only to find someone has already done it. What is great is when you work in a really big lab as there are then lots of people to help you as well as having normal conversations with to help past the time while you run a gel etc.

      I won’t lie there are times that lab work can send you crazy, I know several of my colleagues have experienced hugely disappointing days. One example that always comes to mind is when I try and extract lots of protein out of the bugs I produce it it. You can spend several days trying to purify your protein to then have a machine break down and so you then lose a weeks worth of work not to mention all the experiments you were then going to do with that protein. Fortunately though it doesn’t happen to often especially now I use newer machines that are a lot more reliable.

    • Photo: Keith Grehan

      Keith Grehan answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Labs are really unique places to work. It is common for quite a few different research groups to share a lab space so there is often lots of different work going on in the same room.
      The mix of different projects as well as the nature of the work itself makes a lab a really exciting place to work. In my lab there are so many different machines that it can be really noisy at times but its also a lot of fun 🙂

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