Question: when did you know you wanted to be a scientist and how did you persue it

Hayley Pincott answered on 11 Jul 2025:

When I was at school, I never thought about becoming a scientist. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, even at university I didn’t know, that’s why I chose to do human biology as I thought it was vague enough to lead to a few different jobs once I had decided.

What changed was, I was able to look around a hospital lab. I wasn’t that interested at first, I just went along to humour people. As soon as I walked in the lab I loved what I saw. It was completely different to school labs and something about being able to help people really resonated with me. I liked being able to make a difference, but do it in the background.

From this initial look around, I arranged to work at the hospital voluntarily. I did this for around 9 months and then went back to a different university to do Biomedical Science, however a full time university course wasn’t right for me, so I went back to the hospital to work. I moved to Cardiff and started working at the local hospital in the Biomedical Science labs and went to university once a week, which was perfect for me, and really suited my style of learning. Doing it this way is very similar to an apprenticeship, I was able to earn some money while also gaining the correct qualification in the job I wanted to do.