• Question: What was your biggest motive? Family, friends, maybe a quote you heard? etc.

    Asked by dusk532syne4 on 26 Sep 2025.
    • Photo: Pete Webb

      Pete Webb answered on 26 Sep 2025:

      My biggest motive (I assume you mean to become a Geologist) was initially because I found all things geological to be absolutely fascinating: rocks, fossils, minerals, geological history and so on. Later, my motivation to advance my career was to provide a reasonable standard of living for my growing family. Fortunately, the oil and gas industry pays well so that wasn’t too difficult.

    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 26 Sep 2025:

      My biggest motive has been to help humanity. Some of my own discoveries include how new species of bacteria I discovered transfer antibiotic resistance genes. Other than that, I have utilised materials from plants that can help improve crop yield and from flies that can aid in wound healing. I also make sure my work impacts everyone around me and have done lots of outreach in schools as part of the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. ‘If there is a will there is a way!’
      Thank you

    • Photo: Estela Gonzalez Fernandez

      Estela Gonzalez Fernandez answered on 26 Sep 2025:

      The biggest motivations to chase a career in Science was the opportunity to learn how animals, plants and ecosystems work from different levels: cells, interactions between organisms; and to help society through science

    • Photo: Carly Bingham

      Carly Bingham answered on 2 Oct 2025:

      I first got interested in the human body and how it works when I broke my hip as a teenager, but had no idea that this was a possible career! I wanted to study engineering at university, but I thought I wanted to work on formula one cars. However, when I was in my first year of university, we had a really interesting talk by a lady who was researching how to repair human knees instead of having to do knee replacements and this really sparked my interest in using engineering and science to help people!

    • Photo: Niamh Topping

      Niamh Topping answered on 30 Oct 2025:

      I think my biggest motivation was probably my family, they always just wanted me to do whatever I wanted to study and my Dad was really keen for me to pursue science…during GCSE I became more interested in space science and then carried on with physics to where I am now! It’s also really great having a supportive partner and friends in similar research fields

    • Photo: Hollie Wright

      Hollie Wright answered on 12 Nov 2025:

      My biggest motivation was to have a job that I found interesting.

    • Photo: Kevin Burke

      Kevin Burke answered on 18 Nov 2025:

      I’m an Aerospace Engineer – two big motivators when I was young: making my own distortion pedal for my electric guitar rig – I discovered i could make one a lot cheaper than buy one, and keep upgrading it (and it was fun doing it!); secondly, seeing Concorde land at Manchester Airport – was absolutely gobsmacked by the shape, size and sound it made. Suppose that both these led me into engineering and aerospace stuff generally.

Comments

  • Photo: Andrew M

    Andrew M commented on :

    My own motivation has mostly been the avoidance of concern. This is partly down to passing my teenage years during the uncertainties of the recession of the early 1990s and partly due to my nature tending towards the epicurean. I find happiness not in excess but in the avoidance of stress, of concern. I became a chemist because I enjoyed it and was good at it, but I was good at and enjoyed other things too. Chemistry appeared to off a good chance of secure and sustained employment at a reasonable wage and regular working hours. I thought it a good choice to provide the means for a moderately comfortable life and the time to enjoy it, which is more or less how it’s worked out.

    Friends followed their own paths for their own reasons. At this distance in time I can’t recall us ever really discussing we chose the paths we did. My family were just happy I’d found a direction and calling that would provide for me and let me stand on my own feet.

    I’m afraid I’ve not been possessed of any great drive, no burning crusading fervour, no divine vision of a better world I can help create, just a longing for the security of the simple things – my own front door, a warm house when the weather is bad, food on the table and money in the bank for when things go wrong.