• Question: Why did you choose to go into research and not something more interactive (like a doctor)?

    Asked by Kat to Leonie, Anna on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes

      Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      Hi Kat,

      I considered to study medicine, dentistry and psychology, but decided not because for medicine and dentistry you needed to make up your mind long in advance and I didn’t know what I wanted by then (I only decided to study Human Movement Sciences 4 months before university started), and psychology was only taught in major classes (about 500 students).

      I learned since that I can’t handle people who suffer very well. It makes me very sad, and I can’t stop worrying about them. I understand that the goal of doctors and psychologists is to make people feel better, but I’m worried that it would make me feel bad. So I’d rather help them from the sideline by finding out how our brain controls our movements. Eventually, I hope this will help people who have all kinds of movement troubles.

    • Photo: Anna Ashton

      Anna Ashton answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      Hey Kat,

      I thought about becoming a doctor when I was at school, but I wasn’t sure that it was for me. It’s a big commitment and takes a lot of hard work so I think it’s something that you have to be pretty sure about.

      I was more interested in the biology behind diseases, what it is that goes wrong in the body, rather than wanting to have the responsibility of diagnosing diseases and looking after patients! I also wanted to help make treatments for horrible brain diseases, and help people that way.

      Doing research can be interactive too though. Yes you may have to spend a lot of time in the lab doing experiments, but you usually work in a research team. I’m always chatting about experiments and ideas with my lab mates (and non-science stuff!).

      Also a big part of doing research is telling the rest of the science community about your research, so you get to go to meetings and conferences to interact with other scientists.

      Oops sorry if I rattled on a bit there!
      Thanks for the question 🙂

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