• Question: When did you know what you wanted to do as a career?

    Asked by anon-292590 on 20 Apr 2021. This question was also asked by anon-291481.
    • Photo: Steve Briddon

      Steve Briddon answered on 20 Apr 2021:

      Hi Abi,

      From secondary school, I always wanted to do something involving maths or science. But I went through wanting to do all sorts of jobs (pilot, engineer, writer, guitarist :-)) before I ended up deciding I wanted to be a research scientist. Some of this is because at school you can’t really know what all the different jobs involve. I think it’s OK to not know what you want to do – so long as you know what you enjoy and have a passion for something.

      In the end, I chose to study Pharmacy at Uni because I liked chemistry and wanted to do something “useful” with it. But then Pharmacy has a lot of biology too, and I got really interested in the biology of how drugs work (pharmacology). It was then I think I finally realised I wanted to do pharmacology research as a career.

      So some people know early on what they want to do. for others. like me, the detail takes time to work out – and that’s fine! There are so many different science jobs to do that just knowing you like science when you’re at school is ok – you can work the rest out later!

    • Photo: Lucile Crete

      Lucile Crete answered on 20 Apr 2021:

      I’ve wanted to become an archaeologist since primary school, and never changed my mind! 🙂

      But I have a lot of colleagues and friends that only figured out what they wanted to do much later, sometimes just before going to University, or even afterwards, when discovering new subjects or meeting new people with careers that they had never thought about!

    • Photo: Jess Gallacher

      Jess Gallacher answered on 20 Apr 2021:

      I really knew what I wanted to do as a career. I have always been interested in the environment, how things are formed and the nature around us. I’d never heard of an environmental consultant until I was looking for work experience during university.

    • Photo: Kip Heath

      Kip Heath answered on 20 Apr 2021:

      This is a hard one. I started in my current career at 18, but I applied for the job because I wanted to do science but didn’t want to go to university. I was lucky that I really enjoyed it and am still with the same career as I was then. But what I do within that career changes. I don’t career plan, I look for jobs I like and see how I can mould my current role to what I want to do long term.

    • Photo: Rosie Goodburn

      Rosie Goodburn answered on 20 Apr 2021:

      Towards the end of my physics degree, I started to think about the kind of job I wanted to do on a day-to-day basis. Medical Physics really appealed to me because I could be using my skills in physics and maths and applying them to something that would make a difference in quite a practical and direct way.
      .
      After my PhD, I would like to go back into the NHS and continue working as a hospital scientist in the field of MRI. I would still get involved in research but I also love to help get things working and seeing the improvements I have helped make be used to improve patient care!

    • Photo: Abdullah Iqbal

      Abdullah Iqbal answered on 21 Apr 2021:

      Hi,
      After a lesson learning about stem cells (cells that produce other cells). I decided that research was for me but even if now I am a neuroscientist primarily and not a stem cell scientist. I do research on stem cells and neuroscience. So our interests can change and grow. I would explore your interests but still keep an open mind. As I still kept physics as another career path.
      I still do science communication as well and science is a massive field. So explore and enjoy.

    • Photo: Ross Low

      Ross Low answered on 21 Apr 2021:

      I’ve always liked science but I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist until I was about 20. Until then I was just doing the subjects I liked most. Then I went to university and while I was there I did some work in a research lab and decided that a career in science was perfect for me.

    • Photo: Rebecca Reed

      Rebecca Reed answered on 21 Apr 2021:

      Not until I was about 21. I did science degrees at university, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it for a while. I just followed what I was most interested in. It wasn’t until I decided to do a Master’s degree in neurology – just because it sounded really interesting – that I realised research was a good career for me.

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