Question: is science behind the choses you make ?

Damien Hall answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Hi @puddleduck – what a great question!

For me personally, science or rational thinking wasn’t really behind the choices I made to become a scientist. I studied French simply because I liked it and I was good at it, then, later, I realised that what I really liked was French linguistics, so I became a scientist in that. One of the best pieces of advice that I received when I was at school was that, for your first degree, you study what you like. That was in the days when no-one had to pay tuition fees, so the advice might be a bit different now, but I hope it isn’t. When we were having a chat earlier, we realised that all the scientists in the Brain Zone had become scientists because we loved it, not because it would be useful or pay well! And that’s the best way to be.

For people in general, who knows? Choices can be rational, but don’t have to be. Someone else has asked a question about what the science behind falling in love is, and the answers agree that there probably is such science, but it’s not the most interesting part of the process!