• Question: What is the internal motivation of you

    Asked by anon-359 to Freya, Katy, Louise, Pamela on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Pamela Docherty

      Pamela Docherty answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      That made me think! There are a lot of things: the desire to know more, to understand more, wanting to prove yourself.. although sometimes I find it very hard to get motivated – I feel like it’s all overwhelming and I’m never going to understand all the maths that’s out there!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      The reason I am an investigative scientist is because I am incredibly nosy. Not just curious, plain nosy!
      I have to find things out. I need to know why things happen and what things mean, what objects are and if I don’t know an answer I will go and find out. Apparently it’s a good thing for my job, not so good when you meet a shop assistant called “Asdis” and you just have to know what their name means….(It’s icelandic for Goddess…).

      I am incredibly lucky that I have a job where I get to work with chemists who make totally and utterly new molecules. This means I get to be the first person EVER to see what colours they produce when you shine UV light on them. It’s then up to me to work out why.

    • Photo: Katy Milne

      Katy Milne answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      To always be learning. Learning new things keeps me feeling young and makes me happy. I only choose jobs where I know I will be learning something new.

    • Photo: Louise Pendry

      Louise Pendry answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Oooh – difficult question to truthfully answer. I reckon Freya would give you a fab answer here.

      As a biologist I believe in the theory of evolution and survival of the fitness. This means that deep down my internal motivation must be on some level to increase my chance of survival so that I can produce the next generation of Louise Mark IIs. If this is true that my internal motivation must be totally selfish and aimed at increasing my chances of breeding! Hmmmm – I think I am going wrong somewhere as a single lass 🙁

      Otherwise, what motivates me? Anything that makes me feel warm/happy/good inside – so what motivates me in science? Finding out things which might help to improve the welfare of the animals I work with – which makes me happy.

    • Photo: Freya Harrison

      Freya Harrison answered on 20 Mar 2010:

      Gosh, there are some hard questions being posted! I guess the my motivation for doing science is that I want to understand how things work. I think that everyone wants to know how the universe works on some level – for some people this means understanding how machines work, for others it means understanding people and so on. For me, what motivates me is a desire to understand why the natural world is the way it is. So basically a desire to find things out and ask questions.

      Edited to add: I’d agree with Pamela’s point about wanting to prove yourself too. I definitely feel a need to achieve things and get things done (I make lots of to-do lists…)

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