• Question: do you think you will carry on doing what your doing for the rest of your life of is there something else you would want to do?

    Asked by poppymol to Cesar, Emily, Jamie, Kate, Philippa on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Jamie Gallagher

      Jamie Gallagher answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I will be a scientist all my life regardless of what I do. I will only be a PhD student for another 2 years, then who knows. I love doing science communication and would be very happy if I was to do a job where I could do that.

      Science is flexible and packed with skills I will carry on with research as long as I am happy.

    • Photo: Philippa Demonte

      Philippa Demonte answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      @poppymol I have only been involved in science again for the past 4 years, so I really hope now that I can continue doing it for the rest of my career. There’s so much out there to go and explore!

      The only thing which might stop me temporarily is a lack of funding (the money required to do research), but as @Jamie says, science is flexible. If there was no money available to do research on volcanoes, I would go and research other areas of Earth sciences such as earthquakes or landslides. Studying at university gives you the knowledge (and the contacts!) to go do this.

    • Photo: Kate Clancy

      Kate Clancy answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I will somehow be involved in science for the rest of my life. I really love my job as a professor, but sometimes I think, what if I don’t get tenure? What will I do then?*

      So if somehow in a few years I don’t find myself doing this job, I will either become a full time science writer — I already do quite a bit of this — or I will go back to school to become a midwife.

      Or, I will sit around and eat chocolate and live off my husband’s salary. But probably not. 😉

      *In the American system, your first six to ten years of your time as a professor are a “probationary period,” meaning you are evaluated each year to see how well you are doing. Then you put together a portfolio that demonstrates why you deserve to keep your job forever. Experts in your field write letters about whether you deserve to keep your job, and your department and then university votes on it. If they vote yes, you keep your job, if they vote no, you usually have a year to find a new job. Scary, huh?

    • Photo: Cesar Lopez-Monsalvo

      Cesar Lopez-Monsalvo answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I really want to carry on doing science for the rest of my life.

      This is actually an important matter because despite all the amazing things there are around to be discovered, these couple of years have not been the best in terms of science funding. That is why events like this are crucial for the future of science. Eventually it will be on your hands to decide if science is worth doing or not, just as it is now for you to give an opinion on who should be awarded the prize. Who actually wins it is not that important, but what matters is that at the end of IAS we all have a great chance to give you our own views on how cool science is and why does it matter.

    • Photo: Emily Robinson

      Emily Robinson answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Like Jamie I love science research but I also love science communication. I have one year left of my PhD and I’m not sure what I will be doing after that, but my ideal job would combine them both.

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