• Question: Did you always want to become a scientist?

    Asked by Mary K on 4 Oct 2024. This question was also asked by wage520paps, Sonny Isbister, fete520fops, nans520demo, care519eths, nans519doum, near520muon, just520saps.
    • Photo: Martin McMahon

      Martin McMahon answered on 4 Oct 2024:


      No, even though I was always interested in science my first choice was to be a soldier (random, I know right). I became a scientist after going to university when the army didn’t work out for me.

    • Photo: Michael Schubert

      Michael Schubert answered on 4 Oct 2024:


      Well, it was always one of my plans! I first decided to be a scientist when I was four years old. I wanted to be a geneticist because I thought it was a job that would be part-scientist, part-doctor (and so it was!).

      But I have also wanted to be a lot of other things: a palaeontologist, a writer, a dentist, an actor, a doctor, and much more. In the end, I’m a scientist and a writer, so I got to do more than one of my dream jobs!

    • Photo: Liam Herringshaw

      Liam Herringshaw answered on 10 Oct 2024:


      No, I didn’t like GCSE Science very much. It was only when my A-Level Geography teacher told me I should study Geology that I discovered the idea of becoming an Earth scientist.

    • Photo: Rachael Eggleston

      Rachael Eggleston answered on 14 Oct 2024:


      I didn’t, no! For a good while I thought I wanted to be a librarian.

    • Photo: Luke Fountain

      Luke Fountain answered on 21 Nov 2024:


      My first choice has always been to be an astronaut. That seems unrealistic, and is certainly a difficult job to get, if not the most difficult. So I made it my goal very early on (when I was in high school) to become a scientist that contributes to human space exploration, so that even if I never make it as an astronaut, I will be as close as possible to supporting space exploration, and it will only strengthen my future astronaut applications. So in a sense, the job I have now is the job I have always worked for, and certainly one of my top choices.

    • Photo: David Bremner

      David Bremner answered on 9 Dec 2024:


      No i wanted to be a chef so really liked Home Economics at school i but always had an interest in biology and chemistry. Taking the route i have done means i get to combine the two subjects in the work that i do.

    • Photo: Ashley Hecklinger

      Ashley Hecklinger answered on 10 Dec 2024:


      No, I think science was one of my poorest subjects in school for awhile. I really struggled with chemistry. I was really good at English and History and Languages so I thought for awhile I might become an author or a teacher or work as a translator. It wasn’t until I went to university and took core biology and zoology that it started to ‘click’. I was always really passionate about the environment and wildlife conservation, so naturally it all fell into place.

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 12 Dec 2024:


      Kind of, when I was at school I enjoyed two subjects the most; art history and science. I would have loved to study art history and worked in a museum or art gallery but a science career sounded more plausible. The type of scientist I wanted to become then changed around alot until I settled on control systems.

    • Photo: Carly Bingham

      Carly Bingham answered on 19 Dec 2024:


      I don’t think I always knew that scientist was a job I could do or that there were so many kinds. I remember telling everyone I was going to be a mathematician when I was small and then I went through a phase of wanting to be an astronaut and a marathon runner!
      When I started doing my GSCEs and A-Level, I settled into wanting to be an engineer and even though I did a degree in engineering first, I then did one in science so I guess I’ve only just started thinking of myself as a scientist as well as an engineer!

    • Photo: Amal Lavender

      Amal Lavender answered on 18 Feb 2025:


      i was always torn between becoming a PE teacher or an engineer. i was fascinated by planes from a young age so i guess i always had a love to become an engineer and still love sport!

    • Photo: Richard Birch

      Richard Birch answered on 18 Feb 2025:


      Heavens, no! I wanted to be a journalist, but started working on a farm, then became a horticulturalist (someone who grows plants), because nobody I asked could tell me why bananas – which produce pretty yellow flowers at the blunt end of the banana – never produce seeds, even though bees visit them (answer – they’re all clonal sterile hybrids – a disaster for genetic diversity).
      Then, through working with elderly disabled people, I gravitated into occupational therapy and spent years on the hospital wards, secretly using the hospital gardens to grow strange and unusual plants. There followed University (where I admit I never felt comfortable in the tea room alongside all those nerds!) Finally, I gravitated to being an Ecologist in the private sector… but I mentor students (like you could be) in their degree choices, and collectively we have research published, even though I don’t work in a University.
      Science is a perfect model. You come up with a hypothesis. Then you test it (trying, in fact, to disprove your own idea – its called the null hypothesis) and then you put your idea to a panel of your peers – people as qualified as you are – and if they can’t find anything wrong, then it becomes a THEORY.
      Religion is just faith, economics is gambling, but science is a heuristic (go look that up!) and analytic way of finding things out.
      If only it wasn’t ruined by the fact that sometimes your peers have agendas of their own….!

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