Question: Why did you decide to become a scientist in the first place? Did things to do with your life affect your decision?

Olivia Hibbitt answered on 18 Mar 2010:

Hey xbethx,

I originally wanted to be a medic (silly!!!). So I went off to Otago Uni to do pre-med. But lectures were in the hospital and walking through their with all the sick people and the weird hospital smell gave me the willies!!! So I started to think that perhaps medicine was not the best job for me…….the real moment came in an Anatomy lecture, we were being told about how people used to think that bone was a dead scaffold until a scientist discovered the cells that make the bone and remodel it throughout life and suddenly everyone understood it was a living organ. I thought ‘man, that is what I want to do’ I wanted to be the one making the discoveries, not just handing out drugs….or performing operations (I had wanted to be an orthopaedic surgeon).