• Question: do you have a good social life as a busy scientist?

    Asked by natman8mustafa to Indi, Jarv, John, Ken, Vicky on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Vicky Young

      Vicky Young answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      My moto is work hard play hard. I work hard all week and then I have weekends off for fun with my friends and boyfriend. I also have a lot of friends at work so I have social lunches and coffee breaks every day!

    • Photo: Ken Dutton-Regester

      Ken Dutton-Regester answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yeah, ‘Work hard, Play hard” is a great motto. What I find is good about science is that the work (in general) is pretty flexible. I can more or less choose when I go to work (as long as you get the work done). This means if something fun pops up, say the guys are heading to a footy match mid week, too easy, I can work around that.

      The last couple of months for me though have been pretty busy finishing up my thesis, so my social life has been a bit lack luster. Once finished though (this week)- watch out- party central!

    • Photo: Indi Ghangrekar

      Indi Ghangrekar answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yes, defo! I need to socialise, see my friends and do fun stuff otherwise I’d go crazy! Like Vicky and Ken said, ‘work hard, play hard’ and there is room for flexibility as you can have a lot of independence as a scientist. All my supervisors have trusted me when I’ve not always kept regular working hours to get all my work done in time. And as I have some close friends at work too, lunch and coffee breaks during the day plus someone nearby if you really need to go to the pub after a particularly tiring day at work!

    • Photo: Jarvist Moore Frost

      Jarvist Moore Frost answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      The flexible working hours definitely give you freedom in your life.
      Another thing that I really enjoy is that there’s some really fun people at university and always something interesting going on! So yes, if anything I think I have a better social life as a result of working at a university rather than at a company, but always feel very very busy.

    • Photo: John Prytherch

      John Prytherch answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      As the others say, as a scientist you have a lot of trust placed in you that you will do the work that needs doing. This means you have to be self diciplined, but it gives you a lot of freedom to do the fun things in life, and making time for friends and family is more important (to me at least) than work.

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