• Question: how would you convince me to get involved in your field of work?

    Asked by Haytham_810 to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      It is important that you are not convinced to do anything in life, you just need to want it. What I would do is that I would share my enthusiasm of what I do with you, show you around the lab, discuss my work and if you enjoy it, then it would be your choice to get involved in the field. Ofc, this will probably mean that I will show you the cool stuff first but I will try and talk you around everything I do.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      I’d try to convince you by taking part in I’m A Scientist, and telling you about all the work I’m doing!

      I’d then try to show you the work I’m doing, but I would leave it to you to make the first step. If you have already made the first step, then I don’t need to convince you to do my work, and everything I do from that point is merely fanning the flames of your enthusiasm!

      Unlike a salesman, I am not trying to sell what I do; instead I tell you why it interests me, in the hope that you will find what interests you. I’d be delighted if what I do excites you, but what I hope to achieve is to encourage you to find what interests you, as that way you will always be interested in what you do for a living!

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Like the boys, I don’t want to force anyone into doing science or chemistry because chances are, you wouldn’t enjoy it if I did! But I will say that science at Uni isn’t the same as science at school. It’s so much cooler! I’m making coasters out of some plastic that I made from fruit peel! Also, I’m pretty handy with a spanner now as I make a lot of the equipment I use myself! Sometimes it is like I’m playing with Meccano all day! And other days I make a cameo in YouTube videos. My point is that every day is completely different and exciting! If you have ever looked at something and thought “I wonder what that’s made of” or “I wonder how that works”, you’re already a scientist! You just need a project to work on. 🙂

    • Photo: Francesca Palombo

      Francesca Palombo answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      It is a fantastic endeavour which has an impact on health and wellbeing – isn’t it enough?

    • Photo: Rebecca Ingle

      Rebecca Ingle answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      I think convincing people into careers is probably the wrong way about things but I think it’s important to be well informed of what actually goes on day to day in our field of work, what opportunities there are (for example, most PhD students won’t make it to professor level.)

      People always really enjoy tours of our labs though and getting to see some of the awesome kit we’ve got. It’s amazing how complicated these experiments can look at first. I’d talk about the daily routines we have, some of the bad parts of research and the good.

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