• Question: when you first became a scientist did you know what you wanted to do straight away or did you try alot of things before? :)

    Asked by ameliahill to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Hi Ameliahill,

      Not at all! I never really knew what I wanted to do, all I knew was that I wanted to do something that involved biology at first and then when I tried out some different things, I then worked out what I liked and didn’t like so much, for example, even at University, there were some parts of biology that I was not keen on, like plant biology and biochemistry, so I tried to avoid courses that involved a lot of those things. When I got my first job after university, I was really lucky to be able to do a lot of different things, like molecular biology, microscopy, immunohistochemistry and histology and cell culture so when I decided to go for a PhD, I had a good idea of the things I enjoyed so picked my project based on that. Science is a huge subject area and there is a lot of trial and error involved, but I’m sure that there is something that everyone would enjoy, and a job that would suit most people! Hope that answers your question!

    • Photo: Kara Cerveny

      Kara Cerveny answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Great question — I tried lots of areas that were potentially interesting. As an undergrad I worked in several different labs, and for my senior research project I studied the properties of the blood of patients with the autoimmune disease lupus. As a grad student I was mainly a cell biologist, but I also used some biochemistry and genetics in my thesis about mitochondrial dynamics and inheritance. Finally, as a post-doc, I was more interested in using cell and developmental biology techniques to study the formation of eyes and the behavior of retinal stem cells. I think it is good to have a broad foundation of different ways of thinking about scientific problems, and for me, it has worked to try to understand lots of different types of biology, but other people have a very single-minded focus and that is also a viable scientific mindset too.

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Hi Amelia,

      Thats a really good question. i didnt set out to be a scientist, but it happened to be the thing i tried first and i found i loved working in the lab 🙂 i like to vary what i do day to day- working in research can mean giving presentations one day and culturing stem cells the next, or doing surgery on mice in the morning and teaching students in the afternoon so im very rarely bored! Also, working in different labs keeps things interesting- Ive worked in 4 separate labs now and continue to collaborate with other scientists at the university and throughout the country now, so because ive worked on a few different topics/projects it feels like ive been about quite a bit!

      Science really does have something for everybody, its not all in the lab and its not all at a desk- i choose to focus on the parts that i enjoy most, one of which is chatting to people like you about what we do!

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Hi ameliahill. I thought that I knew what I wanted to do – which was genetics. Although my genetics degree had a first year where we had to do all different sorts of biology, so I got to try out a lot of things. When I decided that i didn’t want to work in the lab I did another one-year course, and then I’m now doing another 4 years. So I guess you could say I tried different things but I think they all took me down the same path, I didn’t chop and change a lot.

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      hi amelia, for me, I chose the field before I came into it because I wanted to choose something that was relevant for me as a surgeon. I almost did research at various stages of my medical career, like on heart conduction and nerves of the face, but then I didn’t go ahead because at that stage in my career, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to specialise in yet. Now that i am specialising in plastic and reconstructive surgery where a lot of what I do in my clinical practice is to help reconstruct damaged limbs, I wanted to do some research on stem cells that can help my surgery. But you are right, you never know where your research can take you and you can end up doing things that are entirely different from what you were doing when you first started.

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