• Question: what inspired you to be a scientist?

    Asked by sxcwill to Amylou, Maria, Mark L, Mark U, Lisa, Katie, John, Jemma on 27 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by lydiawigley, anatole, parthu, charlieroyle, tiggerific.
    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi @sxcwill,

      I’ve always been really interested in how the human body works, in particular the brain. I discovered that I was alright at science when I sat my GCSEs, so I decided to continue on to A level, and then my degree. I don’t think there was a eureka moment in which I decided I had to become a scientist, it was more a gradual progression through my education.

      Jemma

    • Photo: Lisa Fitzgerald

      Lisa Fitzgerald answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi @sxcwill,

      Like Jemma I never had a light bulb moment where i thought I’m going to become a scientist. I enjoyed science at school and realised that science, and in particular engineering, is a great way to satisfy my natural curiosity and use my talents to help people in some small way.

      Lisa

    • Photo: Maria Konstantaki

      Maria Konstantaki answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Well, when I was about your age I wanted to become a vet because I loved animals. I then changed to wanting to become an archaeologist because we had a very inspiring history teacher at school. However, all this changed when I started swimming and got involved in sport. I was fascinated by the capabilities of the human body. For example, how training can improve your performance and was interested to know the physiological mechanisms that underpin these changes (in the muscles, heart, lungs etc.), so sport and exercise science became my true passion and I had to satisfy the need to learn more, so here I am today…a sport and exercise scientist!

    • Photo: Mark Uphill

      Mark Uphill answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Hi sxcwill,

      Back in the 1990’s doing my A’ Levels I had never really considered going to university. It was really the intervention of my psychology tutor who suggested that I might enjoy and do well at university who started that ball rolling. I had a natural curiosity about how I could improve my own sport performance (and there was a lot of room for improvement), and flicking through some of the prosepctus’ I started to realise that there was a whole discipline (sport science) that was in part directed to the question of how to improve sport performance (the careers advisor had never pointed this out to me). The rest as they say..is history!

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