I don’t think I really decided until I started my honours year at uni. I was 21 years old.
I was tossing up being a vet and doing science when I started uni. I was interested in animals and I knew I wanted to work with them. I decided against being a vet because I didn’t want to see lots of sick animals and put them down all the time. So I decided to study zoology instead – now I get to study healthy wild animals, not just dogs and cats
I think I was probably 8 or 9. My Dad used to work building bits of (real) spaceships and brought back some cardboard models of a rocket and a satellite which we made and hung from my bedroom ceiling. I used to look at them hanging there. Then I’d look at the stars at night and think – “So, wait, those things go up THERE? Oh wow.” So I started reading books about astronomy and that was that. Interestingly when I was 18 I won this essay competition about astronomy and the prize was that I got to take my mum and dad to the telescopes in the Canary Islands. These are 10000 feet up on top of mountains in the middle of the sea, so there’s no light pollution and you can see so many stars. It was good being able to take my mum and dad to see that. Now, I don’t do any astronomy – later on I started being interested in other things, but the same basic thrill of science (the “oh, wow”) is there.
I was around 23 or 24. I was close to graduating from uni with a chemistry degree and I finally had to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I started looking around at what I could do with a chemistry degree and applied for jobs that sounded interesting. My first job took me to a gold mine!
I decided when I was 18, in my final year of high school. I’d always been interested in things that were related to science (marine biology, radiography, pharmacy), so I guess I knew early on in high school that I was interested in science.
I had been looking at doing Medicine to become a Doctor but decided that I was more interested in studying diseases and how the body worked than I was in treating them. So I chose to do Biomedical Science, which is about how the human body works, what can go wrong with it, and how you might fix it.
In secondary school, I was interested in science and in puzzles, but did not think I was good enough to have a career in science. All my studies and electives were more in the maths/science areas and related things like geography, economics. At university, I studied science and law, and it was partway through university that I realised that a science career might be possible, so I concentrated on science and did not complete the law degree. My family and friends have said that they knew when I was teenager that I was destined to be a scientist, but I did not know until my early twenties.
I don’t think I really decided until I started my honours year at uni. I was 21 years old.
I was tossing up being a vet and doing science when I started uni. I was interested in animals and I knew I wanted to work with them. I decided against being a vet because I didn’t want to see lots of sick animals and put them down all the time. So I decided to study zoology instead – now I get to study healthy wild animals, not just dogs and cats
0
I think I was probably 8 or 9. My Dad used to work building bits of (real) spaceships and brought back some cardboard models of a rocket and a satellite which we made and hung from my bedroom ceiling. I used to look at them hanging there. Then I’d look at the stars at night and think – “So, wait, those things go up THERE? Oh wow.” So I started reading books about astronomy and that was that. Interestingly when I was 18 I won this essay competition about astronomy and the prize was that I got to take my mum and dad to the telescopes in the Canary Islands. These are 10000 feet up on top of mountains in the middle of the sea, so there’s no light pollution and you can see so many stars. It was good being able to take my mum and dad to see that. Now, I don’t do any astronomy – later on I started being interested in other things, but the same basic thrill of science (the “oh, wow”) is there.
0
I was around 23 or 24. I was close to graduating from uni with a chemistry degree and I finally had to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I started looking around at what I could do with a chemistry degree and applied for jobs that sounded interesting. My first job took me to a gold mine!
0
I decided when I was 18, in my final year of high school. I’d always been interested in things that were related to science (marine biology, radiography, pharmacy), so I guess I knew early on in high school that I was interested in science.
I had been looking at doing Medicine to become a Doctor but decided that I was more interested in studying diseases and how the body worked than I was in treating them. So I chose to do Biomedical Science, which is about how the human body works, what can go wrong with it, and how you might fix it.
0
In secondary school, I was interested in science and in puzzles, but did not think I was good enough to have a career in science. All my studies and electives were more in the maths/science areas and related things like geography, economics. At university, I studied science and law, and it was partway through university that I realised that a science career might be possible, so I concentrated on science and did not complete the law degree. My family and friends have said that they knew when I was teenager that I was destined to be a scientist, but I did not know until my early twenties.
0