• Question: Are any of you superstitious? Do you have any rituals in your work?

    Asked by _Elizabeth_ to Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 22 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      I am not superstitious, but there was once a student in our lab that had an odd superstition.

      So there is an experiment in the lab we do fairly often, but one of the pieces of equipment we use is upstairs in a different lab. That is the piece of equipment we use to measure our samples and get our results. When you go up the stairwell and look out of the window, there is a balcony where pigeons often hang around. He had the superstition that if there were no pigeons, you wouldn’t get a good result.

      As with a lot of superstitions, sometimes it was true, sometimes it wasn’t true, but I don’t think he was being serious about it!

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      I do catch myself being superstitious about black cats and touching wood for good luck. I don’t believe wholeheartedly it’ll make a difference but I do it anyway. I was on a plane last month in row 12 and I noticed there isn’t a row 13 it jumps to 14.

      My rituals at work are probably more out of habit than superstition, I always have to turn the scanners on in the same order, I have to keep my equipment on the same shelf and whenever a scan finishes I click my fingers.

      What about you? Any rituals before a test?

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