• Question: When did you decide you wanted to be a scientist?

    Asked by anon-355924 on 15 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      I liked science at primary school and at high school. It was then fairly clear that I would go to university to do chemistry. I orginally thought that I’d maybe become a teacher or work in an analyical laboratory in industry. University showed me all the other options and I realised that being a professional scientist was a good option for me and fitted my personality.

    • Photo: Clara Zehe

      Clara Zehe answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      I always loved science and was very curious about it. So I always knew I wanted to do something in that field. But I think I only really understood what work as a scientist looked like when I went to university because I did not know anyone who worked as a scientist before that. So, I think I made the decision to become a scientist in my second year of university. I was actually in an engineering course at the time, but I enjoyed all the science modules the most. So this is when I switched to a science degree and made the decision that I wanted to be a scientist.

    • Photo: Graeme Dykes

      Graeme Dykes answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      Probably when I was around 16 and really getting into Science at school. I could have been a medical doctor or vet but it didn’t appeal

    • Photo: Ai-Lan Lee

      Ai-Lan Lee answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      Probably when I was around 16-17, because the science subjects (and Chemistry in particular) were my favourite subjects and I got to do practical experiments in the lab.

    • Photo: Jo Ellis

      Jo Ellis answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      At primary school as I was really interested in how things work

    • Photo: Arno Kraft

      Arno Kraft answered on 16 Mar 2023:

      At the end of my first year at University. At the ball after the final school exams, I told my chemistry teacher that I would study anything but chemistry. After finishing school, I worked in a hospital in a care unit for over a year as part of a community service. This got me interested in medicine. However, my grades weren’t good enough to get a place at Medical School, so I enrolled for chemistry at university. It turned out that I liked the subject much more than I thought a year earlier and stuck with it.

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