• Question: What made you want to become a scientist?

    Asked by eleanorparrott to Alex, Amy, Andy, Georgia, Ollie on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by meganpickard, killamigit.
    • Photo: Andy MacLeod

      Andy MacLeod answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hello eleanor, megan.

      I’ve always been curious, and wanted to know how the world works. I was interested in science at school, but we were just learning about stuff that other people had discovered. Which is something we need to know – we’re always building on what other scientists have discovered (and sometimes overturning it), but it’s fantastic to be able to find out something new yourself. To be able to contribute, in however small a manner, to the collective sum of human knowledge.

    • Photo: Ollie Russell

      Ollie Russell answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hello!

      I think curiosity has played a big part in my decision. I enjoyed sciences at school but I used to get really frustrated when I used to ask my teachers about why things happened and they didn’t really know. It was then that i decided that if they didnt know I would go to uni and do a course that would help my find out why. So I did a degree in Pharmacology and there are still questions that need to be answered so I thought I may as well go and find some of the answers myself!

      I think this is the thing that I love about science. Throughout my life and career I will never be able to answer all the questions that I ask, so everyday is like trying to add a piece to a gigantic jigsaw puzzle!

    • Photo: Georgia Campbell

      Georgia Campbell answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I always really enjoyed science at school, and I think having such great and encouraging teachers really helped with my decision to stick with science! I first knew that I wanted to be a scientist pretty young though – we had a trip to the labs at the Centre for Life in Newcastle to try out for ourselves some of the experiments that the scientists there got to do every day! That was really cool at the time, and gave me a good idea of the fun stuff I’d be able to do every day as a scientist 🙂

      I always knew I never wanted to do any job where I was stuck behind a desk filling out forms all day though – its just sounds so boring!

    • Photo: Amy Reeve

      Amy Reeve answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hello 🙂

      I think i wanted to become an scientist because i wanted to know how our bodies worked and what made them go wrong. I had a head full of questions that i wanted to find out the answers too. Even now i have a lot of unanswered questions but by becoming a scientist i can try to answer them, not just for me but for the rest of the world! 🙂

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