Question: when you were a child did you get bullied for your interests in science ? ANDOR did it put you off trying your best? THANK YOU

Helen Frost answered on 16 Jun 2017:

No, thankfully I was never bullied. Bullying is a terrible thing, and it’s a disaster when someone can’t reach their full potential just because of someone else who is too dumb or too scared to know what they’re doing. Bullies are always scared, usually because they were the victim of bullying themselves, but the exact trigger is different from bully to bully.

If you are being bullied, or you think that someone else is, you must share that information with the people around you who you can trust, and keep pushing to make the situation stop.

When I was doing my A-levels, I studied french, and in the first couple of lessons in year 12, the whole class sat in complete silence, too scared to answer the teacher in french, for fear of looking stupid. During the second class, I decided that was pointless. If everyone else wanted to sit there in silence, that was up to them, but I wanted to make the most of the valuable learning opportunity, and get almost one-on-one teaching, so I started speaking up and before long, other people joined in too. I was by far the most confident french speaker in my class at the end of the year – not because I got everything right, but because I made mistakes without caring too much what everyone else thought. If you’re afraid to put your hand up in class, or don’t want to be called a swot or teacher’s pet, try thinking about how that might affect you and your career in the long-term. While the bullies of the world might be successful thugs and football hooligans, it’s the swots who get the best jobs and earn the most money. Just imagine if Bill Gates had given in to the bullies…