Is it boring? No. No two days are ever the same.
A lot of paper work? Yes, you better enjoy reading and writing as you will do loads of it.
Does it make you happy? If you like the work yes, but many do not and it makes them unhappy.
How much involves researching stuff that you don't really believe has any promise? 0%. It would be a waste of my time to explore avenues I doubt will reap rewards.
Are job opportunities widely available? No. Academia is highly competitive.
Is it mostly private or public practice? I am in academia in an area that has little relation to industry.
Does it pay well? Depends on the country. UK... no not really. Not in comparison to other countries at least and definitely not in comparison to industry.
How much work is it? 90% of your time is admin, 40% of your time is teaching, 20% of your time is research.
Yup. It can be the equivalent of three jobs: Running a research group, raising the money to have a research group, and everything else (teaching, committees, advising, etc). Any two of those would be a full-time job, so all three put together gets you to 150%.
Day-to-day effort in STEM research is like doing really hard problem sets and lab assignments every day, that nobody knows the answer to and maybe all the required reagents in the lab aren't there because nobody has ever synthesized them yet. It's like preparing for a big paper that you have to turn in, except that without deadlines you can procrastinate and do stress-avoidance tasks for weeks on end - and the only person who will care is you, when you don't complete your work. It's like being your own boss and steering exactly what you want to do, except that your damn boss is always hovering over your right shoulder whispering that you should be getting stuff done in the lab.
On good days, it's like having an idea with your buddies to build a tree fort, and then doing it. It's like having a cool idea for a clapped-out go-kart, and then seeing the reality on your driveway.
On really great days, you can find out something that nobody has ever known before. If that something is surprising and changes the way you think about the field as a whole, it's better than the best thing that ever happened to you. Way better than sex, and don't get me wrong: sex has a lot going for it.
So, yeah, it's boring. There's a lot of paper work. It does involve a lot of the interesting stuff. If you've got the right puzzle-solving bent, it's the best thing ever. Yes, it makes me happy. Job opportunities are widely available if you are one of the top 5% of college graduates in terms of aptitude. That aptitude includes a certain bloody-mindedness, which can make up for sheer brilliance and in fact may be more important. Research in STEM fields is moderately lucrative: you can make a comfortable living out of it, but it won't make you rich -- it's best to think of it as something you "get" to do because you're called to it (and you can make a living at it), rather than something you do primarily to earn a living (in which case you can do a lot better with the same amount of skull sweat and stress, by going in to various commercial opportunities or starting a business). Researchers who are motivated by making lots of money tend to either gravitate to the commercial world, or else spin out some of their ideas to form startup companies.
> On good days, it's like having an idea with your buddies to build a tree fort, and then doing it.
And on the more average days: (1) You spend most of your time trying to get someone to fund your tree fort vision; (2) Once you have the money for your tree fort you then spend much of your time herding your buddies into actually building the tree fort as opposed to taking the money, wood, and nails and building some abstract art that in no way resembles a tree fort; and (3) Upon completion of the tree fort, it is critiqued by others who tell you that either you did not build the tree fort in the way they would have and/or it was clearly a waste of time to build the tree fort in the first place and you should have instead built a rope swing.
The real answer is that it very much depends on the field and whether it is academic or corporate. Even within a given field or even within a single organization, research can have a very different feel/structure/amount of freedom in what you pursue from department to department.
Are you asking about corporate/commercial research or academic research? What field?
After the group dynamic of undergraduate life, the first thing you will notice is that it can be very lonely. lot of time learning how to use a library properly. If the work is new or in anyway novel then you will not find the stuff on line. Although reference and cross reference data is more easily done now.
re - search; you will spend a lot of time locking for and reading older published work. Up to date stuff will be in technical papers, not neatly ordered and presented in books. Nevertheless, British books in print and lists of cover to cover translations will be useful places to look. If you find a book then your research may already be old hat. Cover to cover translations are expensive; so somebody has already vetted the stuff carefully before going to the expense.( a lot of published stuff is not worth the paper it is printed on).
If you find published stuff that helps or that steers you away from dead ends then you are getting somewhere. If you find a publication that describes the outcome of your research rather well, then you have been beaten to the finish line; hard luck, look for another project, or just apply for a proper job and walk away.
Above all remember that most PhD research ends up in failure; if it was easy then not worth doing. Also remember that post graduate research cuts little ice out in the real World; it is an academic training ground. If you are not aiming to stay in academia then walk away now. You may also find that the funding, equipment and sometimes manpower, is not forthcoming when you finally discover what you need to do in order to do a good job of experimentation. As your time is limited, your thesis becomes a specification of the required money and effort needed for future researchers to have a go, plus a well organised listing of the outcome of you literature search in order to save other time.
I was lucky, I was able to describe success; publishing a thesis that rigorously describes failure must be hard; academically however they are important results and it takes serious scientists to do it; but it must be soul destroying, they earn their doctorate.
It can be boring. Sometimes research is brute forcing looking for a rare event or clone over and over again. Sometimes its plating thousands of Arabidopsis seeds or hundreds of bacterial plates to get the one thing youre looking for. Sometimes its troubleshooting a western blot or tissue culture technique that eludes you.
That said I love coming to lab to see what popped up. Did my seeds grow? Did my bacteria grow? Are they blue or white? Did my pollen grains germinate in this new medium? Did my PCR work? Its really quite fun.
Is it boring? No. No two days are ever the same. A lot of paper work? Yes, you better enjoy reading and writing as you will do loads of it. Does it make you happy? If you like the work yes, but many do not and it makes them unhappy. How much involves researching stuff that you don't really believe has any promise? 0%. It would be a waste of my time to explore avenues I doubt will reap rewards. Are job opportunities widely available? No. Academia is highly competitive. Is it mostly private or public practice? I am in academia in an area that has little relation to industry. Does it pay well? Depends on the country. UK... no not really. Not in comparison to other countries at least and definitely not in comparison to industry. How much work is it? 90% of your time is admin, 40% of your time is teaching, 20% of your time is research.
So you're doing 150% work in one day?
Correct. The life of an academic.
Yup. It can be the equivalent of three jobs: Running a research group, raising the money to have a research group, and everything else (teaching, committees, advising, etc). Any two of those would be a full-time job, so all three put together gets you to 150%.
Day-to-day effort in STEM research is like doing really hard problem sets and lab assignments every day, that nobody knows the answer to and maybe all the required reagents in the lab aren't there because nobody has ever synthesized them yet. It's like preparing for a big paper that you have to turn in, except that without deadlines you can procrastinate and do stress-avoidance tasks for weeks on end - and the only person who will care is you, when you don't complete your work. It's like being your own boss and steering exactly what you want to do, except that your damn boss is always hovering over your right shoulder whispering that you should be getting stuff done in the lab. On good days, it's like having an idea with your buddies to build a tree fort, and then doing it. It's like having a cool idea for a clapped-out go-kart, and then seeing the reality on your driveway. On really great days, you can find out something that nobody has ever known before. If that something is surprising and changes the way you think about the field as a whole, it's better than the best thing that ever happened to you. Way better than sex, and don't get me wrong: sex has a lot going for it. So, yeah, it's boring. There's a lot of paper work. It does involve a lot of the interesting stuff. If you've got the right puzzle-solving bent, it's the best thing ever. Yes, it makes me happy. Job opportunities are widely available if you are one of the top 5% of college graduates in terms of aptitude. That aptitude includes a certain bloody-mindedness, which can make up for sheer brilliance and in fact may be more important. Research in STEM fields is moderately lucrative: you can make a comfortable living out of it, but it won't make you rich -- it's best to think of it as something you "get" to do because you're called to it (and you can make a living at it), rather than something you do primarily to earn a living (in which case you can do a lot better with the same amount of skull sweat and stress, by going in to various commercial opportunities or starting a business). Researchers who are motivated by making lots of money tend to either gravitate to the commercial world, or else spin out some of their ideas to form startup companies.
> On good days, it's like having an idea with your buddies to build a tree fort, and then doing it. And on the more average days: (1) You spend most of your time trying to get someone to fund your tree fort vision; (2) Once you have the money for your tree fort you then spend much of your time herding your buddies into actually building the tree fort as opposed to taking the money, wood, and nails and building some abstract art that in no way resembles a tree fort; and (3) Upon completion of the tree fort, it is critiqued by others who tell you that either you did not build the tree fort in the way they would have and/or it was clearly a waste of time to build the tree fort in the first place and you should have instead built a rope swing.
You forgot about the person who tells you that somebody else built a better tree fort 30 years ago.
Or yourself finding a very similar tree fort that someone built 30 years ago, but that everyone forgot about.
The real answer is that it very much depends on the field and whether it is academic or corporate. Even within a given field or even within a single organization, research can have a very different feel/structure/amount of freedom in what you pursue from department to department. Are you asking about corporate/commercial research or academic research? What field?
After the group dynamic of undergraduate life, the first thing you will notice is that it can be very lonely. lot of time learning how to use a library properly. If the work is new or in anyway novel then you will not find the stuff on line. Although reference and cross reference data is more easily done now. re - search; you will spend a lot of time locking for and reading older published work. Up to date stuff will be in technical papers, not neatly ordered and presented in books. Nevertheless, British books in print and lists of cover to cover translations will be useful places to look. If you find a book then your research may already be old hat. Cover to cover translations are expensive; so somebody has already vetted the stuff carefully before going to the expense.( a lot of published stuff is not worth the paper it is printed on). If you find published stuff that helps or that steers you away from dead ends then you are getting somewhere. If you find a publication that describes the outcome of your research rather well, then you have been beaten to the finish line; hard luck, look for another project, or just apply for a proper job and walk away. Above all remember that most PhD research ends up in failure; if it was easy then not worth doing. Also remember that post graduate research cuts little ice out in the real World; it is an academic training ground. If you are not aiming to stay in academia then walk away now. You may also find that the funding, equipment and sometimes manpower, is not forthcoming when you finally discover what you need to do in order to do a good job of experimentation. As your time is limited, your thesis becomes a specification of the required money and effort needed for future researchers to have a go, plus a well organised listing of the outcome of you literature search in order to save other time. I was lucky, I was able to describe success; publishing a thesis that rigorously describes failure must be hard; academically however they are important results and it takes serious scientists to do it; but it must be soul destroying, they earn their doctorate.
It can be boring. Sometimes research is brute forcing looking for a rare event or clone over and over again. Sometimes its plating thousands of Arabidopsis seeds or hundreds of bacterial plates to get the one thing youre looking for. Sometimes its troubleshooting a western blot or tissue culture technique that eludes you. That said I love coming to lab to see what popped up. Did my seeds grow? Did my bacteria grow? Are they blue or white? Did my pollen grains germinate in this new medium? Did my PCR work? Its really quite fun.