Question: in your life time so far have you ever thought you would give up

Aileen Baird answered on 6 Mar 2018:

There have definitely been times where I have thought I would give up science! In scientific research, lots of times your experiments don’t work and you have the do the same thing over and over again. This could be because you made a mistake, or maybe because the machine or micro-organism your using isn’t working, or it might just be a different result in the experiment than you were expecting. All of these things can mean that sometimes you come home from a day at work and feel a bit frustrated and sad because you feel like nothing is going right!
This is why its important to have some good friends who are also scientists so you can help each other solve problems, and also have a chat about when you feel sad and you can cheer each other up!!

(Also as a separate thing, I do some really long distance bike rides, and sometimes my legs give up on those!)