• Question: How old where you when you wanted to be a scientist?

    Asked by smitherall to Andy, Alex, Amy, Georgia, Ollie on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by iseeyou, marybegentle, herbilt, frankeh, josephprotheroe.
    • Photo: Andy MacLeod

      Andy MacLeod answered on 12 Jun 2011:

      Probably some time in my early 20s

      Hi smitherall. I went to Uni to study biochemistry after school, and that was the first time I’d met “real” scientist: people who actually did science for a living. I didn’t really have any career plans set in stone before going. I don’t think I was even aware that “scientist” was something you could do as a career, but my tutors encouraged and inspired me to consider it. We hadn’t covered the area I was most interested in, so I moved to Edinburgh to do a Masters in genetics, which is more specialised degree covering one particular area. And I’ve stayed (in Edinburgh, and in genetics) ever since.

    • Photo: Amy Reeve

      Amy Reeve answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi,

      When i was about 15. We had been doing some stuff on the brain in school and i thought, this is pretty cool! Then as i got older and started thinking about Uni the biology courses all sounded really interesting. It was when i was at uni that i decided i wanted to turn pro and do it for my career! 🙂

    • Photo: Alex Munro

      Alex Munro answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      38! You’re never too old! I feel lucky that I’ve have two careers (so far); And I’d still love to study biochemistry…!

      So much to do, so little time!!

    • Photo: Ollie Russell

      Ollie Russell answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I never really wanted to be a scientist. I studied a science degree at uni because I was interested in this area, but after uni I always thought Id go and work in finance or something. It wasnt until I did my 10 week lab project in my final year that I thought I want to do this a s a career. I just really like the way you can have a bit of a laugh in the lab and that everyone you work with is around the same age as you so you end up just messing around all day 🙂 We do do some work as well 😉

    • Photo: Georgia Campbell

      Georgia Campbell answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I was in year 9, so would have been around 13 or 14? It was when we had our first lessons about genetics, and it was probably the most interested I’d ever been in a lesson! After we’d learnt a bit about genetics, we had a trip to the Centre for Life in Newcastle, to learn somemore from the geneticists who worked there. They taught us how to do some of the experiments that they did at work every day,and I was hooked from there 🙂 I think I was really lucky to figure out what I wanted to do at University and afterwards so early!

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