• Question: what inspired you to become a scientist

    Asked by hazzza69 to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 8 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by parrislouisemoore, natashareyn, nevekeeble, holliethompson, sheaquane, phyllhoy01, jackatsirius, kraazypwinceey, blackmoonkitten, shemz, kkhairya, missjelexia.
    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Like I said in my profile I originally started out as more of an arts student studying theatre and literature – I decided to do a Psychology degree because I was interested in people and the brain.

      During my degrees I learned a lot of the basics of biology, chemistry and physics so I could understand what we were being taught! Looking at pictures of the brain and hearing people talk about the body as a whole and how this and the brain made us human really appealed to me. I found something that interested me and only then did I really decide that I could be a scientist, only then did I even believe I could be one! I think it’s really important to remember that you don’t have to start as a scientist, once you find something that you find really interesting anything is possible.

    • Photo: James Stovold

      James Stovold answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      I decided to be a scientist because I get bored really quickly! When I was at school I enjoyed science because it was the only subject that really encouraged me to keep asking questions and to not always assume what I was told was correct. This really helped stop me from getting bored, as I could always challenge what the current thinking was on a topic, and come up with new ideas, so I decided to stick with science so I didn’t get too bored!!

    • Photo: Susanna Martin

      Susanna Martin answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I kind of fell into being a scientist, I actually wanted to be a teacher and was about to do a PGCE when I was offered a place of doing a PhD, I took the PhD and now i’m doing research! I’m not sure if that makes me a scientist or not!

    • Photo: Ben Brilot

      Ben Brilot answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I know this is not quite answering your question, but I was never inspired to be ‘a scientist’. Instead I was inspired to do the thing that I love: trying to figure out why animals behave they way they do. It just happens that that makes me a scientist. I think a lot of scientists would say that it wasn’t that they wanted to be scientists, it’s just that they had a burning curiosity about a particular problem that they wanted to ‘solve’.

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