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Asked by mans1gods on 7 Jun 2024.
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Martin Coath answered on 7 Jun 2024: last edited 4 Jul 2024 4:00 pm
No I didn’t. I think science is mostly just curiosity – young people have ‘what’ ‘why’ ‘how’ questions in their heads a lot of the time from an early age.
As a child I knew that adults knew the answers to some of my questions although I was wrong to think they had the answer to all of them!
But I was in secondary school before I realised that some adults had the job of thinking up totally *new* questions that had never been answered before – and then working on the answers.
I didn’t think I could be one of those people. I didn’t know anyone who had been to university – let alone worked as a researcher – so I had nobody to model the possibility.
This was true until after I had gone to university – I was the first in my family to go. So I was an adult before the possibility even occurred to me.
This is one of the reasons “I’m a Scientist …” is so important. If I had had direct contact with friendly encouraging people working in science it could have been a game changer for me.
Sorry the answer is too long!
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Neil Barnby answered on 10 Jun 2024:
I never considered computing or robotics as science, so I guess not. I always thought scientists wore white coats and worked in a lab.
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Anar Yusifov answered on 19 Jun 2024:
I was dreaming to be a waiter, then an astronaut, then a singer, then a teacher and ended up in High Performance Computing for the reasons outside of my understanding 🙂
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Luke Humphrey answered on 16 Jul 2024:
No, I didn’t. I remember often having thoughts like “I like to do X, it would be great to do X as a career, but then surely everyone would do X as a career, so I probably won’t be able to do it.”
It helped to realise that the things I wanted to do are not things everyone wants to do. I might sound cliche, but people really are quite varied and unique. You’d be surprised how small of a world it can be in any given specialism (not just in science even).
Realising that not everyone wants to do science helped me actually give it a go for myself. If you find yourself thinking similar things, hopefully this helps.
I’d also say it’s hard to plan out your career in advance just by thinking about it. Partly because there are so many unknown unknowns (things you don’t know that you don’t know), but also because thinking about it isn’t the same as trying stuff out and seeing if it’s your thing or not.
Comments
Kirsty L commented on :
Not really, but I am glad I am!
richardcaley commented on :
My dad was a scientist and bought electrical and chemistry sets for me and my twin brother. My brother studied medicine and became a GP. My memory was not as good so I studied electrical and electronic engineering and worked in a medical physic laboratory building equipment to help therapists in a hospital and community environment.