• Question: How old were you when you decided on what you want to be?

    Asked by anon-240657 to Tom, Rebecca, Emily, Elspeth, Ben, Antoine on 9 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Ben Cropper

      Ben Cropper answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      I think I wanted to do science since primary school and I’ve done a bit now. The question is now – do I want to stay here? Science is great, but there’s so much interesting stuff to do in the world. I will see!

    • Photo: Elspeth Keating

      Elspeth Keating answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      17, when I decided to study engineering, on a whim! I’d always liked it but thought I wanted to be a natural scientist and work in Antartica. I found out at 21 that I liked materials, so moved to that field, and then at 27 had to decide where to get my first job… It’s an ongoing process!

    • Photo: Tom Dally

      Tom Dally answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      I’ve wanted to be a scientist of some sort since I was really young (about 6 or 7). But I only really decided that I wanted to make a serious career out of it in my second year of university, when I was lucky enough to be able to go to Peru to do some research on monkeys in the Amazon rainforest. I pretty much decided then that I wanted to do science and research for a career.

Comments

  • Photo: Chris

    Chris commented on :

    I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be a nuclear scientist when I was about 13. He was driving the car at the time and I remember exactly where we were. I didn’t know about particle physics then (which studies the things even smaller than the nucleus) – I guess had I known about that, I would chosen that field. And… (spoiler alert) it turned out that I am now a particle physics researcher.

    But, I know of lots of people who decided quite late about going into science. Everyone is different. That’s what makes the world exciting. So don’t worry if you don’t know what to do yet.