• Question: what made you want to be a scientist and why?

    Asked by xchloewoodx to John, Ellie, Carol, Philip, Rebecca on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by charlotte01, taominevin0712, xo300, rubytracey18, jessicahasahamster123, smb2165, xephos, underthesea, vicky99, scott99, zillage1, zcheeseyboy10, crazybeanz, zblondie, blark11.
    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I don’t think I grew up desperate to be a scientist. I never really knew what I wanted to be, but I was interested in science and technology. Because I was interested in it I think I did quite well in it at school and carried on studying it at University. Then I picked a job that sounded interesting and here I am!

    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I wanted to be doctor when I left school and went to Medical School at Birmingham University for a couple of years but I dropped out as I felt that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I then decided to study Biology at university instead which was really interesting. I was always really interested in Science, especially Biology, at school. I think it is really cool to know how our bodies work and how they might be affected by social factors (eg the areas we live in, our family relationships etc).

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I’ve always wanted to do something that had “science” in it – but it took me a long time to figure out what kind!

      My career ideas went like this:
      first a marine biologist, then a sports scientist, an engineer, a politician (Ok, so I was loving my politics classes at school and struggling with physics), and finally a geo-scientist (what I studied at university)!

      I’ve ended up nearly at the beginning, as an oceanographer 🙂

      For me, science is about asking a question (or lots of questions if you’re me!) and figuring out how you’re going to answer it with some experiments. Then you go away, design and complete the experiments and see what you can find. Sometimes it involves re-designing things, or doing them over and over again, but you always end up a little bit closer to your answer!

      Luckily for me, my questions about animals on the seafloor involve really cool experiments that I love doing!

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