• Question: was your career what you expected when you were at school

    Asked by 247bsmf22 to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 17 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Ellen Gill

      Ellen Gill answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do when I was at school. I don’t think I got very good career advice to be honest!
      When we were picking our A-levels I was more interested in Psychology, and got told I could be a psychiatric nurse and earn up to…£19K a year. Wow.
      I completely ignored this and decided that being a tattoo artist was a way more awesome idea.
      I actually filled up a sketch book with tattoo flash and went looking for apprenticeships in all the studios within 20 miles of me. The tattooists I talked to gave me much better career advice! I was put off the tattooing path and went ahead with the physics degree I was also thinking about by that point.
      After my physics degree I just went looking for graduate schemes that sounded interesting. I interviewed at one nuclear consultancy and completely bombed it, but learnt enough about the industry that I decided I liked it, and was much more prepared for the next nuclear industry interview – then I ended up at my current company.

      If you take away anything from all of this, it’s that adults really like talking about the weird jobs they do! If you’re interested in a job, I really recommend finding people who already do it and asking very politely about what it’s like, and how they got into it. They may not answer, but if they do you’ll probably learn quite a bit.

    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      Interesting question!

      It has been in some ways, and not in others. When I was a lot younger, I had hopes of becoming a mad scientist and had some aspirations for world domination (because who doesn’t when they are younger, right?). The normal world of science is a lot more slow paced and a lot less crazy than that, and world domination is definitely against the rules…

      One of the important things you learn as well is the importance of working as part of a team – good discoveries are made when a lot of people work together. There isn’t just one scientist coming up with all sorts of cures and answers, but teams of scientists helping each other to find answers. When I was growing up, I wanted to be the person who cured diseases (my mum still asks me whether I have cured any diseases yet when I see her). Now I realise that is far too much work for one person, and these things take a lot of time and a lot of effort from a lot of people.

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 18 Jun 2016:

      When I was at school I wanted to work on films making the CGI and visual effects that look very real these days. I moved over to thinking about physics when I was 16 and I thought a career in physics would mean working in a university with a whiteboard and alot of equations. While my job in medical physics does involve a few equations I’m out of the office quite a bit working in the department on alot of different projects which I find really interesting and learn alot in the process.

      So my career is different from what I expected in school but in a good way. I’m really happy with where I ended up. In terms of career expectations I would try and find someone who has the same career you’re thinking of so you can get a good impression of what they do everyday.

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