Question: How did you get to where you are today?

Heather Eyre answered on 23 Jun 2013:

I took a pretty direct route, with only a minor detour along the way.

I knew that I wanted to do science and university seemed like the logical route. I just needed to keep an eye on the next step.

So when doing GCSEs, I though about what next (applying for sixth from to do A-levels), and during A-levels it was going to University. I don’t think I have ever had a back up plan until during my last year of my degree.

I did a year working within a big company after the second year of my degree and didn’t enjoy the way that things worked – it was just the style of management and the way projects worked that didn’t really work that well for me.

When I came back for my last year at university I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do research anymore so I was looking at teaching, going in to medicine and jobs in hospitals. But that feeling didn’t last long, I did my final year project, which was lab based and realised it was the environment I was in, and not research that I hadn’t enjoyed.

The problem was that this relisation came really late in the year, so I had little chance of getting a position as a PhD researcher and ended up doing a 1 year Masters degree before applying to start a PhD the year after.

It actually worked out better for me as there were more projects that were more suited to what I wanted to do, and I gained a lot of extra skills during the Masters degree.