• Question: How old were you when you decided on this career choice?

    Asked by log123 to Amit, Emily, Joanne, Martin, Paige on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by hallb005.
    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      It was during my A-levels that I decided to go into engineering, however it wasn’t until the end of university before I decided on what industry I wanted to work in.
      As an engineer you have lots of different options of where you can work, all very varied and different, you could be designing a new type of car; a tall building; a replacement heart valve; developing a new robot – almost anything you can think of.
      When I left university I decided to start a job in spacecraft manufacture – that was very interesting and I enjoyed it very much, now I work in the healthcare industry, designing products that help people recover from illnesses and ultimately save their lives. Who knows what I might be doing in 5 years time…

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      16-17. I think that’s really young to be making that choice!
      I went to school in France, which means I didn’t have to choose GCSE or A-level subjects (hence why I haven’t answered those kinds of questions!). At GCSE age we still did all the subjects, and at AS level age we simply chose what kind of thing we wanted (the 3 choices in mainstream schooling were literature, economics and science. Also apprenticeship options). They meant that you still did all the subjects, but some counted more than others towards your final grade. For me in the science one, I did:
      maths, physics, biology, chemistry, geology, french literature, english literature, philosophy, history, geography, economics.
      Although english + french lit, philosophy and economics for examples only counted for as much as maths by itself.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I decided to be an engineer when I was 19. I decided I wanted to be an engineering and science communicator when I was 27! Its never too late to follow your dream.

    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Hello log123. Pleased to meet you 🙂

      I didn’t decide to go into the engineering profession until I was 28 years old because I did lots of other things first. It’s hard deciding what you want to do when you are young and sometimes even when we are older, we don’t really know what we want to do.

      I am glad I decided on engineering though and I’ve never looked back.
      There will always be jobs in engineering and plenty of them. 🙂

    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I decided to become an engineer, when I was 18. At that point I was not sure what I will do in my career. After completing my undergrad, I got more intested in ‘biomedical engineering’. At this point I decided, I want to work in ‘biomedical engineering’, at that time I was around 22.

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