• Question: Why did you want to be a scientist(if you did) and did you ever what to be anything else?

    Asked by haydenb on 6 Jan 2016.
    • Photo: Kevin Fong

      Kevin Fong answered on 6 Jan 2016:

      I was excited by space exploration when I was growing up, particularly human space exploration. Because it seemed like something on the edge of being impossible that we somehow managed to do. I thought that all of science might be like that. I obviously wanted to be an astronaut when I was at school, but later that changed. By the time I was a teenager I honestly had no idea what I wanted to be. I studied subjects I was interested in. When I was studying astrophysics I thought I’d be an astrophysicist for while, and then a medical physicist. Finally though I realised it was the medicine and not the physics I was interested in.

    • Photo: Steve Price

      Steve Price answered on 6 Jan 2016:

      I am an engineer.
      Pretty much, I always remember wanting to be involved with space and for me engineering is what interested me. Over the years I have designed, built, tested and operated spacecraft

    • Photo: Katie Hassell

      Katie Hassell answered on 8 Jan 2016:

      I have always enjoyed science, but I also love the music. At one point I thought I would be a musician and go to music school: so very different. Now, I play with 2 orchestras, so I picked the one that’s hard to do on your own or as an amateur.
      Science is great because everything is connected and it’s just endlessly fascinating!

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 25 Jan 2016:

      I’ve wanted to be so many things at various points in my life – archaeologist (the Indiana Jones years..), doctor, actor, musician, astronaut, chemist to name a few. The main drive behind anything I wanted to do was wanting to learn more about the world we live in. At some point space became the thing I was most fascinated by and that lead me to do physics. But I realised I would have preferred engineering so did a different degree after my first. I love what I’m doing now but am always looking for opportunities to try completely different things. I think students sometimes worry that what they choose to study will be the only thing they’re allowed to do but that’s not true – it’s just the first step to learning about all the other opportunities there are out there!

    • Photo: Michaela Musilova

      Michaela Musilova answered on 27 Jan 2016:

      Yes, I did want to be a scientist, but that came later one (in high school). Before that I loved art very much and I wanted to become an artist. My father is a diplomat and I also thought that I could be good at that (I speak many languages, I am a good team player and leader, I enjoy working with many people for all over the work, etc.). However, when I became passionate about space and wanted to know whether life could possibly exist elsewhere in the universe, I realised that I would have to study planetary science and/or astrobiology to find out. I also always dreamt of becoming an astronaut one day, so becoming a space scientist was the perfect way towards that career.

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