Question: What give you inspiration to be a scientist?

Jennifer Bates answered on 4 Nov 2016:

I was inspired by my local archaeologist who asked me a simple question: what are YOU interested in?

That question has repeated itself down the years at every step of my life as an archaeological scientist.

I moved house when I was 7 and there was a mound in the back garden. So, naturally, I dug a 2 meter deep hole in it! (Mum wasn’t very happy). In it I found a pot, in bits. It wasn’t a very nice looking pot, it was burnt, coarse, with white flecks (shell, used to hold the clay together, we call is a ‘temper’), but I got a book from the library and put it back together properly, and took it to my local archaeologist. I was expecting her to tell me it was rubbish but she was so excited! She told me it was Iron Age, so over 2000 years old, and that it was rare to find one so complete, and asked me to come on a dig that weekend.

While we were digging she asked me what I was interested in and that got me thinking – what is it about the past that I am interested in? It’s not the shiny objects, or the kings and queens. They’re fun when you find them, but actually I’m interested in people, what did the average person do in the past? How did they live?

Fast forwards a few years to my A-Level archaeology and my teacher asked me the same question: what are you interested in? The answer was easier: people. But he asked me – what questions are you going to ask about them? And then again at university, I was asked on excavation, what part of this dig are you interested in, and this time I had an answer: I want to study the everyday lives of people in the past and I am going to do that by looking at food, and bingo – here is the flotation tank (machine for getting samples), here is the soil, off you go. Career started.

So I’ll ask you to think about it now: what are YOU interested in? And hopefully that will help you find a way into your chosen career. 🙂