What’s the most difficult thing you’ve come across in your work?

Question: What's the most difficult thing you've come across in your work?
- Keywords:
  difficulty,
  work
Asked by koalatea13lemon to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 17 Jun 2013.
- Jess Bean answered on 17 Jun 2013:
  
  Sometimes unfortunately for us scientists, tests and research does not always go as planned or work as we expected. If you are stuck on a particular thing that is not working, the most difficult thing is persevering and keeping optomistic 🙂 Most of the time it’s your friends and colleagues that keep you going!
- Christina Pagel answered on 17 Jun 2013:
  
  My research involves trying to turn real patients and how they move through a hospital or a treatment programme as an equation and predicting things from that equation. So the hardest thing is when, as part of the research, you meet patients, particularly children, who are going through the worst of time of their lives (like waiting for a life-saving transplant, knowing that without it they have only a few months to live) and I know that i have to reduce that to an equation. It is a very humbling experience.

Question: What's the most difficult thing you've come across in your work?