• Question: What challenges have you faced during your career?

    Asked by darcie on 17 Oct 2025.
    • Photo: Bethan Davies

      Bethan Davies answered on 17 Oct 2025:

      Mostly overcoming health challenges and not letting adversity stop me from getting where I want to.

    • Photo: Emily Walls

      Emily Walls answered on 22 Oct 2025:

      There was a lot of imposter sydrome for me more recently that I had to overcome when I was interviewing for PhD positions. It was a challenge being the only girl most of the time in classes and labs, I never really met any female astronomers until university – I feel like I belong more if I see more people like myself in the field that I am in. I also came from a low-income background so going into science was something really unheard of in my family and I navigated that a lot on my own.

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    It took me a while to find the job where I could use my training as a vet in a job that I felt gave me the feeling of ‘making a difference’ – A few years after I left university I was lucky to have the chance to do a research project abroad which opened my eyes to a different environment/different owner and animal problems. I started to feel that I could use my training to help large numbers of animals and people to improve the animals’ welfare and to make people’s lives better at the same time. So I moved from working as a clinical vet in the UK to working for animal welfare charities and now I really enjoy what I do – when I left university I didn’t even know that this kind of job existed, so it was a case of trial and error, and some luck, to find it.