I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I wanted to be a neurologist. That seemed to be the most difficult, most intriguing, and the most important aspect of medicine, which had links with psychology, aggression, behavior, and human affairs.
I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.
My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.
I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon.
I think if I weren't so squeamish, I would have been some sort of forensic analyst. And I can't do anything with a microscope, because then I start thinking about the world of germs around us.
At the time I finished high school, I was determined to study biology, deeply convinced to eventually be a researcher.
When it came to choice of subjects, science was obvious - since I was uninterested in anything else - but a decision that caused consternation in some eyes was my demand to take biology for A-level.
My interests span biology, though sometimes I feel like an anachronism, somebody from the Victorian era when there weren't so many boundaries dividing the sciences.
I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I'm a physician scientist.
I was a terrible science student, so I could never be a scientist; my mind doesn't work that way. But I've learned to love the stories around science, and I have so much respect and fascination for the people who can make discoveries and find applications. There's a lot of drama there.