• Question: what were your parents reactions/opinions when you told them that you were going to work as a scientists or other jobs?(were they supportive?)

    Asked by anon-217185 to Savannah, Philippe, Lucy, Joanna, Harrison, Edoardo on 12 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Edoardo Vescovi

      Edoardo Vescovi answered on 12 Jun 2019: last edited 13 Jun 2019 12:15 am


      Friends’ and parents’ reactions were somewhat neutral at the beginning of university. Studying physics opens many job opportunities and research is only one and taken in the final year. At this point you have a new place to go, you get paid and live elsewhere, so nobody can really stop you. Few know what a researcher does, so nobody usually objects on science itself. Negative comments were about the distance hometown-new town. Also people more puzzled rather than unsupportive. Going abroad somehow hinted at a good job, so I got support for it from classmates.

      Hard time instead when I introduce myself to someone who tries to grasp how I spend the day. The typical conversation goes like:
      1) explain that physics is not physical education,
      2) physicist is not nuclear physicist and I’m no weapon builder,
      3) justify that doctor is not medical doctor and, no, it’s not less,
      4) I’m no student and get paid!
      Ironic as it sounds, it’s too often true and these chats may help reducing the distance to our world.

    • Photo: Harrison Prosper

      Harrison Prosper answered on 12 Jun 2019:


      My mother bought me a telescope and this was the best gift I ever had. My parents, who did not go to college, were very supportive. For them, education was the key to the wider world and though of very modest means they supported my brothers and sisters and me as we pursued our education. We did not all succeed in the way we had hoped, but it was not for lack of support from our hardworking parents. I suspect that my parents still are not too sure exactly what I do, but their support has never wavered. The only thing my mother asks now is that I slow down a little!

    • Photo: Savannah Clawson

      Savannah Clawson answered on 12 Jun 2019:


      My parents have always been supportive of my choices which is great and I am super grateful for that. Unfortunately, a lot of people still don’t realise that girls can do physics just as much as boys and I got some funny looks and confused questions from friends and family when I decided to do physics at university. One of the questions that really annoyed me when I said I was going to study physics was “Oh, so are you going to be a teacher then?”. This is not because teaching is a bad job – I think teachers are amazing people who work so hard at what they do (my mum is a teacher). This question annoyed me because it was ALL they thought I could do as a girl with a physics degree. This is exactly what a man at the bank said to me when I was trying to get a student bank account, to which my dad replied “she’ll be your boss in a few years mate”. Remembering this still makes me smile to this day because my dad has always been one of my biggest supporters and believed I could go on to achieve whatever I wanted in life.

    • Photo: Lucy Budge

      Lucy Budge answered on 14 Jun 2019:


      Confusion! Since no-one else in my family has done science beyond GCSE I think – but they have all always been supportive. They also still don’t understand what it is I’m studying, despite my best efforts to explain it!

    • Photo: Joanna Huang

      Joanna Huang answered on 14 Jun 2019:


      They were very supportive, and very excited for my future prospects 🙂 As I got deeper and deeper into the study of particle physics, I find it more and more difficult to explain to my parents what it is that I work on. Even the concept of quarks, which are smaller than atoms, is a hard one to grasp!

    • Photo: Philippe Gambron

      Philippe Gambron answered on 17 Jun 2019:


      They were a bit puzzled but supportive. Sometimes, people don’t know very well what science is about. In this country, being a scientist enables you to find a nice job. So this is a safe bet. You follow your passion and, at worst, you land a nice job. In Belgium, where I am from, it is not like that. Studying physics is a little bit like studying philosophy. It is deemed useless. So people would tell that, if it were to make such an effort, I should become an engineer or a lawyer instead. When they understood it was about research, some people concluded that I necessarily worked in a hospital, to cure cancer.

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