• Question: Would you say you're happy with the career choice you made? If not, what path do you now think you would have rather taken?

    Asked by vrow532eger27 on 20 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Luke Humphrey

      Luke Humphrey answered on 20 Nov 2025:

      Have you seen the Star Trek TNG episode ‘Tapestries’?

      Captain Picard suffers a fatal injury to the heart, and it’s revealed that he might have survived if he didn’t have an artificial heart due to reckless decisions made in his youth.

      He’s offered the chance to go back and make a different choice, but when he does so, he finds that his life turned out very differently. Without having learned the value of life from that experience, he became someone he doesn’t recognise.

      When accepts that he’d rather live with the decisions he made originally, he wakes up in the medical bay. Later, he describes his experience:

      “There are many parts of my youth that I’m not proud of. There were… loose threads – untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I… pulled on one of those threads – it had unraveled the tapestry of my life.”

      The episode is a little annoying, because it implies that becoming a “mere” astrophysicist on the federation’s flagship is not a life well-lived, but I think the core message is good.

    • Photo: David Cussans

      David Cussans answered on 20 Nov 2025:

      Yes. I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning now and although there are many things any of us can do I am content that I have ended up in a career in scientific research. Maybe somewhere out there is a career that would have been better but I am grateful to have had the chance to do something interesting, challenging and brought in enough money to put “bread on the table”.

Comments