• Question: have you always wanted to be a scientist and how did you end up doing what you do?

    Asked by tcarder07 to Sarah, Alan, Caspar, Diana, Murray on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: . This question was also asked by sarikaaaa, thesnorth.
    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi, no in fact I really wanted to do electronics from a young age – and I got my wish:)

      In fact I answered a very similar question a moment ago so I hope you don’t mind me pointing you to that answer, about how I became a scientist: http://ias.im/35.240

      I also answered a question about how I got into robotics here: http://ias.im/35.300

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      No when I was younger I wanted to be a primary school teacher and I went to work in a primary school for my work experience, but then I realised that the kids would never listen to me because I’m not scary enough and every day would always be the same, I would never get to learn anything new.

      I decided to do a degree in chemistry because it was my favourite subject in school and I think that you should always just go with your heart when making decisions like that, like what subject to take or what to do for a career. My favourite part was doing experiments and I knew that this would be what being a scientist would be about.

      Then while I was studying, I lost somebody I was really close to, to cancer and I felt so helpless and useless at the time. I knew then that I wanted to go into cancer research after my degree, to help others and do something good with my life.

    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      I used to work in banking and finance but i was getting bored with it so I went back to university at night school (at birkbeck in london) to study psychology. I started out just doing it for my own interest. But i started to find the mind and the brain so much more interesting than my day job that I quit banking and studied full time for my phd.

      Back when i was a school I quite liked the idea of being a scientist or a mathematician but it all seemed far too difficult. At that time, I had no idea that there even was such a thing as developmental psychology (aka baby science) so i would never have thought I’d be doing something like this for a living.

      Within psychology, I became interested in babies and very early development because i decided that if you want to understand the human mind you should start at the beginning.

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