Women in Science
Deciding on a career in science
Audio clip: Persephone found it easier to get a holiday work-placement that involved science, than archaeology (her first choice). She realised there would be more jobs in science.
So I think, and at school I think I had quite a broad range of interests and when I was thinking about choosing subjects for ‘A’ level, I actually was very torn as to whether to take history and English and Latin or whether to take scientific subjects and maths. And I think what made the decision for me was when we’d finished our, what were then, ‘O’ Levels, we were encouraged by the school to seek a work experience placement in the summer holiday and I had thought, ‘Wow, it would be fantastic to be an archaeologist.’ And I tried to obtain a work experience placement in some kind of archaeology setting or some placement associated with a museum or something where I thought that I could, you know, use history as a career and Latin and some of the things I was interested in. And it was extremely difficult to find anywhere that I could get a work experience placement in that kind of setting. And equally I looked for placements that involved science and, and that was very much easier, and I actually got two-week long placements; one in a vets and another one actually in a lab in Industry, which actually was sort of a quality control type lab…
Mm.
…and I think that made me realise at that point that if I went into sort of more the arts subjects it may be very difficult in the future to really find a job at the end of the road. So it was for very practical reasons I think that I made the decision to go into science.