• Question: Have you ever made a mistake in your work, if you have, what was it, and what did you learn from it?

    Asked by anon-352646 to Zoltan on 7 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Zoltan Lipp

      Zoltan Lipp answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Oh, I have made lot of mistakes! 🙂 But as you suggested in your question mistakes are great opportunities to learn from.
      It is also very important to admit you made a mistake as soon as you realise it, don’t try to hide it, because the sooner a problem is detected the easier it is to fix it.
      As an Engineering Manager there are lot of opportunities to make mistakes, for example very recently I have put people in the same team who could not work very well with each-other, what I have learnt from it, that there are some personal factors that are less visible and maybe sometimes it is better to allow some flexibility to the people to decide who they want to work with, rather then I’m figuring out on my own.

Comments

  • Photo: Ansh

    Ansh commented on :

    I make mistakes all the time, and sometimes they are very silly mistakes! As I’m a theoretical physicist, most commonly they end up being algebra mistakes, and sometimes they aren’t spotted until very late when I may have already used the (incorrect) result in something else!

    The most important thing is to correct the record as soon as possible once you realise, to check things more thoroughly in the future, and also to acknowledge that making mistakes is human, and science is done by humans, so mistakes are part of the process!

  • Photo: CB

    CB commented on :

    I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t made a mistake at some point in their work but as you suggested we can learn from them! The most important thing is that when you realise your error that you tell someone and don’t try to hide it, this way you can work on fixing it. It can be easy to want to try to hide it, or fix it so no one else notices but this can cause other issues so better to own up to it. Also sometimes you can make discoveries from the mistakes as well, it’s all part of research and science in general so don’t worry too much about it happening if you were to go into the field 🙂

  • Photo: Bernice

    Bernice commented on :

    I have made loads of mistakes. I have always maintained that we only learn from the mistakes we make, the things that go right we carry on doing, but mistakes make us re-think and learn how to do something differently. Most of the mistakes that I make are because of time pressures or lack of understanding and I have tried to plan my time more carefully and to check back with people what they mean before doing anything major. Today I have discovered I asked the wrong question to our students and I have to look at what emails were received for the change in question as well as talking to the question setter and marker about how this could be dealt with, it shouldn’t be a big problem overall but it will need a change in a mark scheme as well as informing all the markers involved.