• Question: did people crush your dreams of working in science

    Asked by liamsevans71 to Andrew, Hina, Ian, Kathryn, Leah-Nani, Xu on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Kathryn Burrows

      Kathryn Burrows answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      No, everyone I met has been very supportive.

    • Photo: Ian Jones

      Ian Jones answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Yes, I’ll write a book about it one day! It was more that people tried to stop me establishing my business. However, I think that if something is difficult to achieve, it must be difficult for everyone to achieve. Therefore if you keep working on it until you get there, many others will have given up along the way.

      I was teaching in Africa earlier this year and some of the girls from Madagascar were telling me that they were under a lot of pressure from their families NOT to study science. Their families couldn’t see the point and they wanted their daughters to stay at home. Despite this, they worked extra hard to be good enough to come on the course we were teaching. I think that sometimes we take all the opportunities we have in the UK for granted.

      If you have a dream…. keep plugging away until you get there. And remember that you achieve your dreams in small steps.

    • Photo: Leah-Nani Alconcel

      Leah-Nani Alconcel answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      There were certainly a few who tried. Obviously they failed, though.

    • Photo: Andrew Margetts-Kelly

      Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      On the whole my education has been really nice in that respect. My parents were supportive and my teachers were great.

      There was always the odd group of peers at school that thought being clever wasn’t cool so they made their views known in the form of bullying; but they were few and far between. It’s important to never listen to anyone who is putting you down or discouraging you from learning what you enjoy the most; because they are always wrong, only YOU get to decide which dreams YOU pursue.

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