Question: How old were you when you realised you wanted to be involved with science?

Elliot Jokl answered on 15 Jun 2016:

Thanks for the question!

My mum tells me that I was eight years old when I said I wanted to be a scientist, so I guess I was pretty young!

My dad was very interested in science, and he was even a science teacher for a short time before he switched jobs. On long car journeys he would sometimes ask me and my sisters science questions, and talked about it a bit if we didn’t know the answers. So I think his enthusiasm for science rubbed off on me. My parents also bought me lots of Horrible Science books, which are very fun to read and I would highly recommend them.

I also had some great science teachers from junior school right into sixth form, and they helped keep my enthusiasm going. I just love how science can help us to explain things, even very complicated things, and how we can use that information to make our lives better and look after the world we live in.

I think I have been very lucky – lots of people get put off science if they struggle with it at school. My advice would be to stay with it. You might find at least a part of it that you find very interesting (there are plenty of bits of science I find boring, too!).