• Question: When was it that you decided that you wanted to be a scientist for your career?

    Asked by cotterill to Andy, Alice JB on 10 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Alice Jones Bartoli

      Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      Not until sixth form. I wanted to study languages and English and become a journalist.
      I liked doing GCSE sciences, but I wasn’t exactly amazing at them, and some of it was *really* not my thing at all. I did the International Baccalaureate in sixth form, so I had to study a science. I did biology and wasn’t particularly great at that either, but I loved Psychology, and I decided that I wanted to study people. I only really realised that I could *do science* when I went to university.

      I’m now really proud to call myself a scientist, I’ve changed a lot of my career ideas and done a lot of new learning, but I’ve had some excellent role models and it’s been totally worthwhile.

    • Photo: Andy Norton

      Andy Norton answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      I’m not really sure, to be totally honest! My Dad has always done science (he used to make low-fat marg, mayo etc. for a big company), so I’ve always sort of known about science. He used to take us to his lab when we were little (maybe 7 or 8), gave us a lab coat, a pair of goggles, and we could “help” him with his work (I think that we caused more problems than we actually solved!). So I think that I always thought that science was pretty glamorous and intriguing. However, it wasn’t really until I went to Seniors School that I sorted of realised that science was actually really cool, and that it was the sort of thing that I ACTUALLY wanted to look at. We had some pretty good teachers, and then sort of inspired me to look into science a bit more. Then I realised that I didn’t want to just me like my Dad and walk around in a lab coat all day, but actually wanted to be myself and study science.

      Hope that that made sense!

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