Question: Why did you like science?

Senga Robertson answered on 3 Nov 2017:

Hi Ben, Matthew and Willber!

That’s a brilliant question!

I got in to science in a kind of strange way. When I was growing up I lived in a town in Scotland where most families (including mine) didn’t have a lot of money and most people didn’t go to university, a lot didn’t have jobs either. I always thought that I could never be one of those people that went to university and I didn’t even know where to start. I did well at school but sadly wasn’t given much support when it came to deciding what to do after school. When I left school I started working for an electricity company in their call centre complaints department (I got paid for people to shout at me basically). After working there for quite a long time I became a parent and one of my children had to do something VERY brave, it made me realise that I could be brave too and decided to challenge myself and go to university. Initially I wanted to be a medical Dr but very quickly realised that I am not very good with blood, sick, poo or gross stuff in general so it probably wouldn’t be the best job for me. Instead I decided that I still wanted to help people but without all of the gross stuff so I decided to study science.

Now I work on helping crop plants to grow using bacteria instead of all of the nasty chemicals that farmers have to spray on them just now that are really bad for the environment. It could also help people to grow crops in areas where they don’t grow easily just now like in some developing countries. I’m really glad that I found a way to help people and our environment using science…and that now I don’t get paid for people to shout at me. ha ha ha

Senga 🙂