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Asked by gourlaykid to Richard, Anna, Craig, Sue on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by joshum1243.
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Richard Case answered on 21 Jun 2011:
Hi gourlaykid,
Thats a good question, coz I am sure you expect us all to come on here bigging up our job.
I do love my job, but like anything else you can have off days… things aren’t what you expected… you might make a little mistake.
Looking at fingerprints all day and everyday can get quite boring and its not for everyone… but the job is also what you make it, so if you investigate all about the crime then that can make it a bit better.
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Craig McKenzie answered on 23 Jun 2011:
Hi Gourlaykid,
that’s a good question to ask because no job is actually how you want it to be all the time.
so one of things i don’t like about my job sometimes is that there are too many things to get done in a short space of time and that tends to get me a little bit stressed sometimes. I don’t panic though but i sit down and decide which are the most important things to get done first and ask for help if i need to – sometimes the things we have to do first are not the tings we want to do first!Like Richard says I do love my job too but sometimes in the laboratory my experiments are not working properly and i do not get the results i might have expected. This can be a bit frustrating sometimes especially if there are people waiting on the right results. It takes time to fix the problems and figure out why things might not be working but it is always worth it in the end – some of the greatest discoveries in science have been made because of experimental mistakes!
If you were a forensic scientist what do you think would be the part of the job you might not like as much?
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Anna Williams answered on 23 Jun 2011:
Hi Gourlaykid and Joshum1243,
This is a good question!
Like Richard and Craig have said, it is hard to love 100% of your job, 100% of the time. Although I generally really enjoy all the different things I have to do and all the challenges I face, I do sometimes feel like I haven’t got enough time to do all of the things asked of me. I find that, when I have a case to do, there is a lot of pressure to get everything right first time, and there are very high expectations of me, then this can be a bit intimidating. I also don’t especially *like* seeing and touching the dead bodies, especially if they are children, but it is just something you have to do.In my academic job as a lecturer, I don’t like it when students don’t pay attention or are late to the class, because it is disrespectful to me and to the other students. I also don’t like it when things go wrong with my research – for example, recently I set up a motion sensitive camera to record if scavengers were getting onto my decomposition facility, but I accidently set it on too high a sensitivity setting, so it took a photo every time the wind blew, so now I have to start again! But, as Craig said, sometimes, these sort of mistakes can lead to something good happening too!
Comments
Sue commented on :
Just out of interest Richard, do you find that looking at fingerprints all day is tough on your eyesight? I sometimes find that looking at microscope slides for long periods of time affects my sight and can give me a headache. My optician says I don’t need glasses just yet but in a few years I probably will…
Richard commented on :
Good question Sue, I have actually found the opposite.
At school I required glasses for reading and watching television, but when I started the job I found that looking through the magnifying glass actually strengthened the muscles in the eye to the point where I now have 20/20 vision. I believe it acted as a form of exercise for the eyes.
Now that I am passed my peak of physical fitness, I am expecting my eyesight to deteriorate and quite possibly at a faster rate. I know of a lot of people in my profession who start to struggle more as they near retirement. 🙂