• Question: do you set yourselves targets to be able to achieve your future ambitons?

    Asked by laceyann to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Scientific questions are hard to answer, so you have to plan ahead quite a long way. When I was at school, I took science subjects, because I knew I wanted to do science at university. Now, I want to do science communication for my job, so I am doing things like this, and work experience with newspapers to get experience and find out how to do it.

      But life can be very changeable, and part of the fun is the things that come unexpectedly and can change the whole course of your life. I had one great teacher who changed my mind about what I was going to do at uni from biochemistry to geology. If he hadn’t I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today!

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      I tend not be able to think in terms longer than a year. This will probably end up being bad for my career but at the moment it’s fun 🙂

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Yes, I think that it’s important to do this. It’s good to have both small, short term targets – today I will do this experiment and longer term ones too like this year I will speak at two conferences and publish papers. I don’t always achieve all my targets and sometimes things change very quickly and I have to rethink what I’m going to do next. It keeps it interesting though!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Mostly I have just spent my time and effort on what interests me. I suppose I have future targets – and I do of course plan my research program in way which makes something which can be done. But personally I’ve always felt I’ll be most effective in life if I’m spending my time working on what interests me.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I think you have to set little targets, like “I’m going to get this report/experiment/widget finished by the end of the week” but really big targets can be a bit dangerous because it makes you less flexible. So I’ve made more decisions about what to do when the opportunity comes up, rather than aim for them specifically.

Comments