A Future in STEM is for You!

I have to laugh: as a child, my hours would roll into days as I often spent the soggy British summertime building my latest mansions with the world famous building blocks that go by the name of Lego. Admittedly, I don’t need much of an excuse to assist nieces and nephews in their attempts to build the tallest tower or the 3 storey town house these days, but yesterday I found myself walking into the Lego store in Sheffield to enquire about the latest female scientist character. Complete with conical flasks, the female chemist is a much welcome, slightly overdue addition to the Lego family. And I wonder what I would look like as a Lego character. What would you look like?

Creating a character or an avatar gives us the freedom to explore how we would like to appear to other people in an ideal world, and what our perfect career would be (just so we can select the correct accompanying tool to go with our avatar, of course).  Once we have the ideal, perfect vision of ourselves firmly in our own mind, we can start taking steps to make that a living reality. But let’s go one further and consider what we want to be remembered for; discovering life changing cancer therapies; making an impact towards low carbon technology; reducing the need for animals in science research; developing cheaper vaccines for low income economies; etc etc.

I am currently in the process of making a huge, potentially life-changing decision that has reignited a dwindling spark in me about what the future of science looks like for me. A career in science will always evolve to whatever you want it to look like, whether it be teaching the next generation of genius’s, researching your own questions about the wonders of the world or moving out of the lab and into a slightly different territory where lab coats and safety specs are a thing of the past. But the science, and the research and the curiosity remains. For me, the future career I want in science has already started to mould itself into my ideal job, and I’m in control of the next chapter of my life.

I can’t ignore the invaluable lessons I learned in the lab along the way: the hours spent on the spectrophotometer and deciphering my latest set of kinetic data; the care and attention to detail whilst purifying proteins through chromatography and other techniques; tending to my human cells in culture that I cared for for over 3 years. All of these experiences have enabled me to work out where my path is taking me next. A future in STEM is definitely for me. I always want to play for the curious team, the team that asks questions about the world, the team that asks ‘why’ and the team that pulls together to find answers to make our world a better place. Imagine this Earth without the mathematicians working alongside the geologists working alongside the engineers to solve erosion and drought that the tempest brings. Imagine our Earth when all bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics we so heavily rely on now. I love playing for the STEM team. The question is, is a future in STEM for you?