boring scientific work - how do you handle it?

[Dreamer]

how do people here from all disciplines handle that sort of scientific work which is full of endless details, requires accuracy and determination without giving up in the middle? any useful tips?

[Tesseract]

how do people here from all disciplines handle that sort of scientific work which is full of endless details, requires accuracy and determination without giving up in the middle? any useful tips?

 

I would think all scientific work contains endless details, accuracy, and determination.Math, physics, biology, astronomy, cosmology, engineering.... the others

About handling it, its not given to jsut anybody, usually people into thorough scientific work have gne through school and have enjoyed their area of science and chosen a job.Its not all fun stuff and discoveries sometimes you have to do the detailing and write analytical reports and so on.

[Dreamer]

i do hope your reports are more articulate than your reply.

[swansont]

how do people here from all disciplines handle that sort of scientific work which is full of endless details, requires accuracy and determination without giving up in the middle? any useful tips?

 

You have to enjoy it. Or have the discipline to see it through in case you don't.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Not all science is boring. Making all kinds of discoveries, some of which may save lives, is fun.

[Dreamer]

Think more concretely. If you have a report to prepare, and you're extremely uninterested in its subject how do you get through it? Answers you given me were far too general. Really, I don't need to hear a lecture about the role of science in our lives, I just want to know how students/researchers get through assignments which they find painfully boring and seziphic. I am a student, and I find some subjects were interesting so I don't need encouragment to explore them, but there are specific assignments - not many which I'm terribly uninterested in performing. So think you're in my position, you got a huge report to prepare, you don't really want to do it - how do you actually do it the most effective way? I expect rather than conceptual/philosophical answers a more practical and down to earth reply. I for example tend to break such assignments into several parts, spread them across my time so I wouldn't have to plunge into them that much, which results in a somewhat dilitant but over-all good work. I have a bit of attention deficit, so I never sit on something for 10 hours or something - I usually integrate play into work and mix flirting with studying. To be slightly more focused I have asked a perscription for 'Concerta' which is a 24-hours ritallin and I use it despite the absence of ADHD diagnosis simply to improve my concentration. But really, what I want to do here is ask you how you do it, not share my imperfect way of doing so. I'd like to hear from experienced insightful people who are capable of giving answers that are of any use to me. I'm a lovely person who shouldn't be taking drugs that aren't designed for my problem because they'll be more of a hindrance than a help and invite you all to stay in my lovely thread wonderland and maybe have cookies before we all come together to form a solution.

 

Sincerely,

Juanita Goldstein.

[Glider]

As a student, you are playing somebody else's game in order to gain the qualification they offer. All students will find certain elements of whatever they are studying extremely tedious, but to achieve the qualification you want, you will have to jump through certain hoops. That's how it is.

 

How to do it? Application. As I have said in another post, concentration, or the ability to concentrate for longer periods is a skill. It cannot be taught, it is developed through practice. Taking drugs to assist won't help you develop the ability to concentrate. In fact it's more likely to inhibit it, especially if you don't have ADHD in the first place. If you find you can sit to a task that interests you for long periods, then you don't need drugs to help you with the boring ones. You just need a bit of strategy. Here's your answer:

 

So think you're in my position' date=' you got a huge report to prepare, you don't really want to do it - how do you actually do it the most effective way?...

 

...I for example tend to break such assignments into several parts, spread them across my time so I wouldn't have to plunge into them that much, which results in a somewhat dilitant but over-all good work.[/quote']

 

When you have a huge (and potentially boring) report to prepare, try to avoid thinking "I have to write a report", instead, think "I have to write a good paragraph/page/section". Don't try to sit to a boring task for too long. It's better to do a small part of it well, than a large part poorly. If you do a sufficient number of good sections, you will end up with a good report.

 

This is how I did my thesis. The idea of writing a thesis is a bit too big to take in one go and very daunting. So I didn't think of it that way. I used to think "today, I have to write a good paragraph". That was a lot easier to handle, and after a sufficient number of days, I ended up with a 70,000 word thesis.

 

This is not to say that it didn't take some self-discipline and application to make myself sit to the task each day, but it was easier to do so knowing I only had to do one paragraph, although I usually did more once I had got my head into it (often between 1-2,000 words, depending on the section). It's just a way of psychologically reducing the task to easily managable proprtions, but it works.

 

I'm a bitch, and you'll have to get used to it.

Nobody has to get used to it. You're the only one that will have to live with it.

 

Anyone who doesn't like it can get the hell out of my thread.

You'll have to get used to spending time alone in empty threads then. Have fun

[admiral_ju00]

I'm a bitch' date=' and you'll have to get used to it. Anyone who doesn't like it can get the hell out of my thread. Who do I have to give a blow job here to speed things up a little bit?

 

Sincerely,

Juanita Goldstein.[/quote']

 

Uhm, Nice.

 

Anywho, back to your question.

Yes, sometimes I do share the same feelings, but I try finding ways or reasons that will justify me doing it(but so far there have been only 3 such projects that I found extremely boring, so that may not count for much) Chunking things down usually works for me.

Someone has to do it, right? Weight it out, I mean if a large portion of your studies fits the criteria of boring, then I'd think about switching to a different field of study or something.

[senexa]

I think my most boring assignment was in helping to draft the HazMat transportation laws. It went on ... and on .... and .... zzzzzzzzz

 

I tried separating into smaller and more manageable units, but even some of those were really good analgesics.

 

Eventually I used 5x8 index cards and hand-wrote the basic premise of each subheading, then broke that into more cards, referencing and cross-referencing as I went.

 

It was then quite easy to write the final report by flipping through the cards.

 

I personally find that hand-writing in that way does far more to organize my thoughts than using the computer, taking them into long-term memory.

 

Using a computer basically skips sensory memory and you spend most of your time in working memory, so it is easy to drift away or be distracted.

 

A good article on how memory functions:

 

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/human-cap/memory.html

 

I would be very, very careful of self-medicating; your liver could be permanently damaged by what you are taking now.

[daisy]

Whatever you're eventual employment is in life you will be bored on a fairly regular basis. That's life......get used to it. I'm a research fellow and I regularly have to carry out tedious and boring lab experiments, but I balance that against the excitement of having successful experiments. There are millions of people worldwide who have to suffer dull repetitive jobs all their lives....that's something I tell myself when I'm inclined to whinge about doing something boring.

[Dave]

One of the most frustrating subjects is without a doubt mathematics. You can work for years on a problem just to find out you're trying to prove the impossible. However, you just have to remember that what you're doing is probably going to benefit in the long run - if nothing, it's giving you a lot of experience. I get a whole lot of boring problems as an undergraduate that require a lot of tedious and long-winded proofs/calculations, but that doesn't mean that they're pointless. I just get through it by looking into the future and being able to work on what I want to work on.

[researcher88]

Scientific work is indeed full of endless details, and also requires accuracy and determination without giving up. Science is certainly very interesting. Science is the key of life. Succeeding in science is one of the best feelings you can get! After all it is one of the hardest subject.

 

You’re living because of the fact of science!

[AtomicMX]

I liked that last post.

[futureless]

Hmm.... I'm thinking of doing a a degree in an area of science, but it seems to me like there will be a lot of boring work included in the course

[insane_alien]

science can be extremely boring at times. like titrations. after you've done a couple they become the most tedious thing in the world. well, almost. big brother is far more tedious. but on the whole science is interesting. if our a scientist you get to do things that non-scientists have no idea that they could be done. the reports are boring but you gotta get them done. just put on some music take a bag of crisps and sit down and write it. you could also offset the boredom with interesting things outside your job/school/uni, like skydiving. a bit pricy but its great fun.

[ecoli]

sometimes science can be boring. I worked in a cloud-particle physics lab once. It was all number crunching of the computer and no field work at all. I hated it, and vowed to stick to biology after that. I'v never found microbiology work boring.

[CharonY]

Well, I dunno, I find cultivating bacteria extremely boring. Especially if you have to deal with slow-growing anaerobes.

And that is just to get to the time-consuming boring actual experiments. Having the data on the hand...hmmmmmm:D

 

To be a scientist, I think, you have to have a drive for it in the first place. I mean the pay is bad, the workload is high and

as in most other professions a lot of it is probably boring routine work.

Then it is fairly easy to overcome the boring parts (especially if the alternative is having no job that is )

[Dak]

And with a crack of thunder, the rotting corpse of an ancient thread rose from the archives, its dried posts creaking in complaint at being forsed to move, once again, amongst the first page of the forum; it's HTML moaning in protest at being forced to mingle with the living threads...

 

And then, the scent of the living threads filled whatever passes for nostrils to a thread.

 

'coooooommennttttsss' it moaned, the scent of the crypt heavy upon it's breath; 'must... consume... coooommennnntttts', as it shuffled ever nearer to the quick and easy experiments thread, which thrashed heplessly in an atempt to unstick itself from the forum and make it's escape.

 

little did anyone suspect that soon... sooner than anyone would have thought possible... the forums would be over-run by SELF REPLICATING ZOMBIE THREADS OFF DOOM!!!!!!!!! (bum bum BUM!)

 

anyway, loads of inportant advances in science -- the genetic sequencing array being the first that springs to mind -- have been developed because someone eventually got too bored of doing some tediouse task, and developeed a quick and easy way to do it, so one option is to try to design an easyer way to do whatever it is that you are doing.

 

alternatively, trick someone else into doing it for you.

 

What!? don't look at me like that. watson and crick did it

[insane_alien]

ROFLMAO! haha! brilliant post Dak! yet another way to lighten up science. make up zombie stories. you could always log on and browse the forums if your near a computer.

[Tom Mattson]

how do people here from all disciplines handle that sort of scientific work which is full of endless details, requires accuracy and determination without giving up in the middle? any useful tips?

 

This exact same question could be asked of any career choice. People don't get jobs to be entertained, they do it to earn a living. And if you're lucky enough to earn a living doing something you enjoy, then more power to you. But no one enjoys everything about their work, no matter what they do. But you grow up, and suck it up, just like everyone else.

[sophster]

I deal with the boring bits by thinking about just how exciting and important the result will be at the end if the experiment really works. The sort of stuff I do takes a really long time to set up before being able to generate any results so it's always worth being totally meticulous in my preparation. Last thing I want to do is get everything sorted and then find out one of the components is broken/dirty/lost/run out and not replaced so being careful and accurate feels more like a time saving tip than anything.

 

If I get really down about stuff there are also my fantastic colleagues and we all go down the pub, have a moan, get it off our chests and start again.

[Foi4895]

This exact same question could be asked of any career choice. People don't get jobs to be entertained, they do it to earn a living.... But you grow up, and suck it up, just like everyone else.

 

This is so dangerous to all science. Science is not a job. It isn't a 'way to earn a living'. There are jobs that require knowledge of science. Good scientists love science. They think about science. That's it. They are good at recognizing obscure patterns in natural systems and proving those patterns exist. None of that do I consider a job.

 

 

how do people here from all disciplines handle that sort of scientific work which is full of endless details, requires accuracy and determination without giving up in the middle? any useful tips?

 

If you are preforming dull projects in school then it is a failing in the teacher, go to them and let them know you are not getting as much from this assignment as you have from others in the past, and if it's not too much to ask could you complete an alternative project that demonstrates you have learned the information they are trying to teach you. I can't think of a reason a teacher wouldn't.

 

If all scientists handled work this way the worst thing that would come of it is a large number of happy scientists working their hardest to complete meaningful work. There are programmers out there without jobs who would love nothing more than craft a program that will handle all your shitty statistics you wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

 

Some people grow up, and some people just grow. You can use those around you, many will be grateful for the useful feeling you give them. Don't ever handle science as a job, please. But maybe that's just naivete.

[mr d]

hello

 

main reason for slugging your way through it is you want a pay check. sad to say but true.

secondly try to find something in your boring project that might relate in a manor to an area that does interest you.

is there some information or data there that might help you out on your topic giving you a chance to benefit yourself while working on your assignment.

 

good luck

 

mr d

[scicop]

as the poster above mentioned, any job can have its boring, tedious moments, and science is notorious for that. If you can't handle that, then move along to another career. Following graduate school, I entered law enforcement. You would think that would be an excitinig career, the reality is that there are alot of boring tedious jobs that I handle, with few periods of excitement (blowing through red lights with the sirens and lights blaring is fun). But those times are few and far in between..and like science, its those few moments that should be inspiring to you!!! if they are not..then time for a career change..and no matter what career you choose there will be ...boring and tedious times to get over!!

[Genecks]

It is best to be right the first time, then to have to do everything again 100 times over.

 

I dislike the whole mathetmatics proof B.S. I leave that crap to the geeks who have a lot of free time. For me, biology is the only way to fly.

 

Biology is a lot more interesting and productive; the results can be slow or sudden; however, things do change overtime with an organism; the changes make things less dull.

 

I'm sure if someone were a pyro or crazy ballistics lover, then working with extensive chemistry and physics detail wouldn't be too bad. I assume it's all about why someone wants to do something in the end and why that person chose that career.

 

- http://www.hhmi.org/becoming/

 

Of course, in today's society scientists are getting screwed over more.

 

- http://www.physics.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html

 

Only an elite few will make it so far.

 

I'm toggling between medical and scientific careers. Depends on where I am after next year.

 

In the end it boils down to intrinsic motivation or hate or love or something.