thinking out loud ......life choices

an inspiring talk recently started me thinking about my early subject choices at school and their effects on my subsequent work and career .......

right from my first year in secondary school i loved doing science - we were lucky to be of the generation who first experienced the nuffield approach to teaching science (and maths) - this involved brand new text books, lots of experiments with brand new equipment and very enthusiastic teachers - as i was always interested in how things worked and having a go this was really interesting for me

while all this was going on in the lab our art teacher took a rather academic approach, teaching us lettering first and then body proportion using one of those little wooden models - so working in pencil and lots of rubbing out for me ..... hardly inspiring! it got more interesting when we got a different teacher but by then it was a bit late

it's only now that i realise that my approach to science was rather slapdash .... i loved doing the experiments but writing them up was a bit of a bore and later on the maths of it all got very complicated