• Question: If I wanted to be a scientist why would you inspire to do so and what specific job would you inspire me to do?

    Asked by Hadeel to Greg, Jen, Laura, Mobeen, Paul on 16 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Paul O'Mahoney

      Paul O'Mahoney answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      I think that science is a really valuable career, you can do a lot of really good work and make a difference in a lot of different fields. And it is quite rewarding solving problems and coming up with creative solutions.

      As for specific jobs, it really depends what part of science you are really interested in. It is also perfectly ok to not know! I had some vague ideas that I wanted to do something with physics and maybe biology and I enjoyed those subjects, so those are the subjects I studied but I didn’t really know what exactly I wanted to do. Naturally my preference is now medical physics but that’s just me, and I am interested in many other areas of science too. The world needs all kinds of scientists and all are valuable!

    • Photo: Laura Haworth

      Laura Haworth answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      As Paul said science is a great area to go into. You learn so many skills that can be used in all aspects of your life and it is rewarding to be constantly learning new things.

      I would say find an area that really interests you/ you are passionate about. You don’t want to go into a job that you don’t enjoy or that doesn’t excite you. There is such a variety of careers as demonstrated in this’ I am a scientist’ and that is only a small proportion of areas of science covered. You can work with animals, people, cells or technology- there are so many options available it is just finding out what interests you.

    • Photo: Greg Melia

      Greg Melia answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      Since I work in science, I obviously think it’s great that you’re interested. Science can be a really fascinating career: you can work with the basics of reality, the very fundamental ways that the world itself works, and discover what makes things the way they are.

      If you want to know more, have a look around at different scientific careers that you can do, try to speak to some people who do them, read about them in books or on the internet and maybe try them out for work experience.

      You should decide two things:
      1) What are you good at? This will affect what careers you’re able to do
      2) What do you want to spend your days doing? This will affect what careers you want to do.

      Have a look and see what careers fulfil both (1) and (2). If you can get a match, you’ve found your dream job!

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