• Question: did your parents have an impact on your job choices?

    Asked by anon-241086 to Tom, Rebecca, Emily, Elspeth, Ben, Antoine on 11 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Ben Cropper

      Ben Cropper answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      Probably. Both are teachers, and are quite left wing politically, so I wasn’t encouraged to go into something ‘business-like’. I have always been fascinated by the world around me though. I remember I made a bargain with my mum when I was in primary school that I could stay up until 10 but only if I watched documentaries on the TV! I especially loved the ones with sharks and dinosaurs in.

    • Photo: Elspeth Keating

      Elspeth Keating answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      Both my parents have PhDs, and my sister does too… I think we grew up in quite an academic environment, my mother always valued hard work and good grades at school. My parents separated when we were quite young so most of the influence came from her. She is friends with two Nobel Prize winners, and when I met one as a school child, I thought, “Wow. You can win medals for science!” My dad took us on educational holidays, which mostly just made me like museums with interactive features.

    • Photo: Tom Dally

      Tom Dally answered on 12 Mar 2020: last edited 12 Mar 2020 2:56 pm

      They always encouraged me to do what made me happy, so yes from that perspective! But I was also the first person in my family to go to university, so I didn’t really have any knowledge of what being a scientist would be like or how you would get there. I really enjoy what I do, and I’ve always liked and been interested in science, and my parents definitely fostered that.

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