• Question: What was your favourite subject in school? Do you use it in your work and how?

    Asked by ekes532parr65 on 6 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Lindsay Keith

      Lindsay Keith answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      Hello! I liked biology and english at school, and I ended up working in science communication and science engagement (festivals etc). I now work in a science research institute and my job is to try and get our scientists work out into the news and raise awareness of it. So when they publish a paper in journal describing a discovery (journals are where researchers publish their findings) I have to read it and understand it and try to turn it into language that will be interesting and readable for non-scientists. As an example of this: Here’s a link to an original paper by one of our scientists (very difficult to read if you’re not already trained in science!) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07701-9 and here is the story as the BBC covered it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gr3x3xkno. In my career as a science communicator I have also run festivals, produced films and theatre and done stand-up comedy!

    • Photo: Rebecca Randhawa

      Rebecca Randhawa answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      Biology was always a favourite of mine and I definitely use it in my day-to-day work. I help design trials to test new medicines and understanding how medicines work and interact with the human body is very important.

    • Photo: Rachel Edwards

      Rachel Edwards answered on 7 Nov 2025:

      I really enjoyed physics and maths, which I use every day now. But my favourite subject was probably art and graphic design. I took this all the way through to A-level, and it has been incredibly useful. Some of my research is designing scientific equipment, and the A-level taught me how to properly design things. It also helped with thinking about how to present work, like when making slides for a talk.

    • Photo: Laura Durrant

      Laura Durrant answered on 10 Nov 2025:

      I really enjoyed Biology and Chemistry at school. Although, I much preferred organic chemistry because it has a lot more biological context (I also just found inorganic chemistry really difficult!). It’s why I chose to study Biochemistry at university rather than Chemistry.

      I definitely use what I learned from these subjects in my job today. Because of the variety of biological research at our institute, a good foundation in biology is essential for me to understand the context of any given project and exactly what it is the researcher is trying to achieve. Meanwhile, my chemistry knowledge is useful for deciding what type of experiment would be best suited for a project and how to optimise it to get the best results possible!

Comments

  • Photo: eleanormerson

    eleanormerson commented on :

    My favourite was history, but my second (joint) favourites were chemistry and physics. There seemed to be more jobs for scientists, so I chose that direction. I can still enjoy history as a hobby – I listen to lots of podcasts. I think it is actually better to have done it this way – if I had tried to have a career in history I would have had to focus on one bit, which sounds boring.

  • Photo: Andrew M

    Andrew M commented on :

    In school my favourite subject was economics, perhaps the most scientific of the social sciences, and certainly the most pyschopathic. It offered a different way to look at the world and, like the sciences I studied, added understanding of the world and a great deal of colour and flavour to it. History was my great love outside school, I just didn’t take to it, the way it was taught in school sadly.

  • Photo: Alana M

    Alana M commented on :

    My favourite was PE! I loved so many sports and activities when I was younger (and still do), and that was by far my favourite GCSE subject. The sports science in the subject I also found really interesting too!
    I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I finished school but I knew that choosing science would keep my options open (whether I wanted to stay in science or not), and that I could play sport in my free time alongside that. It’s worked out really well for me!

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    I liked maths, both because I had a great teacher and because I enjoyed the problem solving aspect. I fell out with my chemistry teacher so I dropped it early but once I came back it later when I wanted to apply to vet school I realised that I quite liked the organic chemistry topics. I also enjoyed languages, (French and German) and music as I play the piano and cello, which I find very good ways of relaxing/switching off from work