• Question: did your family and friends encourge you to be A scientists

    Asked by anon-214197 to Helen, Farah, Dave, Cheryl, Bastian, Alun on 15 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Farah Elahi

      Farah Elahi answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      My family and friends encouraged me to consider a career that I was passionate about. They didn’t mind what it was, particularly my parents. I also spent time deciding what I wanted to do – after my psychology degree, I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to complete a PhD (which is what I’m doing now), train to be a clinical psychologist (this is where I’d work in the NHS and provide therapy to patients) or become a medical doctor (this would involve me going back to university and doing another degree again). During this process, my friends and family were really supportive and encouraged me to take my time in making this decision.

    • Photo: Helen Faulkner

      Helen Faulkner answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      My parents always told me that I should do whatever I wanted to, that I should learn about topics that interest me and that I should do a job that I actually want to go to every day.
      I still think my dads education and career influenced me but science was always one of the lessons I looked forward to at school so maybe I would have ended up in science anyway.
      Most of my friends are also scientists so they don’t really encourage or discourage me, I think they’d support me if I decided I wanted to try a different job though.

    • Photo: Cheryl Williams

      Cheryl Williams answered on 16 Jun 2019:

      My family and friends are proud of what I do, but they would have supported me in whatever career I chose.

    • Photo: Bastian Saputra

      Bastian Saputra answered on 16 Jun 2019:

      Most of my friends encouraged me to be a scientist, but not from my family

    • Photo: Dave Underhill

      Dave Underhill answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      not actively – my family supported me as much as they could to get through my studies, but they didn’t necessarily want me to be a scientist, just to do what I wanted to do – it just so happened that ended up being science. Many of my friends still have no clue what it is I actually do lol – it doesn’t matter to them – again they just want me to be happy in whatever I am doing. which is nice 🙂

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