Why do you choose to be a researcher? - (Feb/20/2007 )

Hello, everyone!
i want to ask why you choose to be a researcher..
maybe someone wants to be a scientist or professor..or something like that..

now, i donot understand why i am choosing to be a PhD student.
I had a dream to be a scientist, but i am losing confidence,maybe i am not suitable for research work

I chose to be a researcher for several reasons. First of all, I have worked in routine pathology labs, and I was bored doing the same thing day in, day out. I have also worked in a core facility, doing protein sequencing, peptide and DNA synthesis etc, and I got sick of just being one isolated step in other people's research efforts.
On the positive side, there is something really good about being the first person to see the structure of something (my PhD was in protein structure by NMR), or working through a problem. Also, I wanted to move into research that is applied to human need.
Apart from anything else, science is better than being chained behind a desk all day, writing reports and going to meetings that go on too long because the chairperson doesn't know how to keep things moving. And there are conferences!

yeah i also had bad dream, and too late discovered that it is not what I want. i dont want to be researcher, but having a phD and teaching 2-3 hours per week is ok, so i want this phD.

I wanted to be a scientist since I was 4 year old . Of course, at that time, I thought it was different. I wanted to discovery something really important like the cure of cancer or a magic pill that cure everything or a marvelous drug that make you feel good without any bad effect!!!

I don’t know what is your specific case. Don’t you remember why you wanted to be a PhD? Now, do you have an idea of what would you like to do?
Or, are you just stressed, depressive, desperate, bored? Aren’t your experiment working?
If you have some troubles, you should wait until they clam down, and then ask it again!!!

May be, this is a completely different case , but when I was an student, I had a lot of very very long bad times!!!

My advisor never talks to me… I wrote here about it before… a few month before I finished, ones (one of the few times we talked) he asked me “by the way, what is your thesis work about?” Can you imagine!!!!
I had no experience; there was nobody I could ask to! Well, it’s a long story.
The point is that sometimes I felt I wasn’t for this. I felt really disgusted, sickened . I felt out of place. I felt the other student had things in common that I didn’t share, etc, etc, etc….
After some period of time, everything changed… (well, not my advisor), but everything got much better and had a “happy ending”!!!
Now, I miss my friend from the institute and I love what I do … (Excepting that now I’m completely alone in this lab ).

I just like to do puzzles and play with toys all day long. I wanted the mental stimulation; I didn't want to do the same thing day in, day out...science allows me to escape from boredom

I like puzzles so i can be a scientist or spend my life on my playstation - actually youd be suprised how quickly that gets boring - at least with science its a never ending puzzle (and pays for more games)