Question: How did you decide on just studying one subject? I can barely even pick between subjects for GCSEs, I just love them all too much!

Lori-Ann Foley answered on 16 Mar 2020:

I was lucky in that when I was in secondary school I was able to study all the sciences – I was like you, I loved them all too! 🙂 Then when I went to university to do my science degree I choose what they called the astronomy pathway, which had a number of set courses and some options for the years of study. But we could change pathways and I decided to go for physics. It had a lot of courses in common with astronomy so I could take those credits with me, but it had specific courses on physics that I preferred. So check if it is possible to make changes to your course once you start at university. And some universities also have sort of ‘taster’ courses, where you can do a general course that lets you try out all the sciences to find out which one you like best, then you specialise as you progress through the course. I did my BSc with the Open University and that was nice and flexible, which I really liked. I am doing my PhD with them, too, as I was offered two PhDs – one from them and one from a different university, and studying Mars with the Open University was the one I liked best. So if you can find a university course that lets you start out doing general sciences and then specialise as you go along, you get a good chance to see what you like best. 🙂