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Asked by Olivia to Jonathan, Kellie, Kevin, Melissa, Stephanie on 23 Apr 2016. This question was also asked by Zaina, 689hemb33, ........ The original, Gymnast, Brendan.
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Kevin Baker answered on 23 Apr 2016:
In high school, I did not like science. I felt it was very boring and I was not interested. I was like this until my sophomore year in college when I took a chemistry course. I was completely in love with the subject and how it made me think. It challenged me in a way I did not get from my other classes and my professors loved to teach it. They inspired me to pursue science.
I picked microbiology by chance, actually. I knew I had to do science, but I could not pick which one. So a friend and I randomly picked a major (which I do not recommend!). As it turns out, I enjoyed the subject a lot and continued with it!
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Kellie Jaremko answered on 23 Apr 2016:
I have always liked science although I didn’t know about neuroscience and the brain very much at all when I was young.
When I was little I made everything into an experiment like making face paint from rock dust, raising a caterpillar into a beautiful moth that hatched the next spring, and learning how to bake, which is actually a lot like chemistry.
I got into neuroscience because I figured that was the best way to treat the pain I found out a family member suffered from. When I went to college and actually got to see and learn about brains I was hooked.
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Stephanie Moon answered on 23 Apr 2016:
Hi 677hemb28–
I don’t think that science was ever my favorite class or subject in school. I found out that I liked doing science when I learned that doing science was so much more than just memorizing facts, and that it was more about asking cool questions that didn’t have a known answer (and then trying to find out what that answer might be). This didn’t happen in any classes I took until I was in my junior year of high school- we had a great psychology teacher that let us design our own experiments and do a tiny scientific study on something we were actually interested in. I always loved the outdoors and learning about plants and animals, and finding out that I could use science to understand more about them made me really interested in pursuing a career in research. -
Melissa Wilson Sayres answered on 24 Apr 2016:
I always liked science and experiments, but never did the kind of science that I’m doing now. In fact, I was always intimidated by computer programming, and didn’t take any classes or training in computer science until I went to graduate school. I went into computational evolutionary biology because I always liked mathematics and logic, and realized that by learning programming (basically, a new language with logic), I could answer meaningful biological questions.
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Jonathan Jackson answered on 25 Apr 2016:
You know what’s interesting to me? How differently I thought about science in high school versus how I think about science now.
I kinda liked science in high school – it was fun learning about chemistry, biology, physics, trigonometry, and calculus. But it always felt like a dusty set of rules that I had to learn. There were formulas in textbooks, a set of homework problems. Rules were rigid, set from time immemorial.
But here’s the funny thing about science: it changes and grows and moves like a living thing. The dry, dusty rules were just the beginning. It’s like learning the rules to a complicated game. Once you figure out the basics, you can do all kinds of amazing things! For me, the amazing thing that I get to do is look at the human brain and try to figure out new ways to detect and prevent Alzheimer’s disease. But there’s not a rulebook or a roadmap – I’m asking questions that have never been asked before, learning things that have never been known before, and I get to be as creative as any artist. It’s a fantastic job I do every day, and I wouldn’t say that you need to love science in middle school and high school in order to be a promising scientist. You just need to be curious, and curious enough about one thing in particular to chase after it all the way through school and training.
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