Martin Chalfie Quotes

Coming into community college, I wasn't sure of where I wanted to go in my future.

I studied psychology and sociology. I think my assumption was that I would go to graduate school, and I don't know what I was going to do after that.

For whatever reason, college was just not a huge focus for me. I wasn't planning ahead. I just didn't think about it too much.

I always knew I'd go back to school. Modeling was a means to an end, making money for graduate school.

My parents, and especially my mother, encouraged by the director of the local school which I was attending, wanted in spite of everything to send me to a National School of Arts and Crafts so that I could later become an engineer.

My career is just kind of crazy.

I think I told my parents I wanted to be a writer, just so they'd kind of think I had some direction in life. It made it easier to pick out classes at college, like, 'Oh, this is writing classes, that's what I'm doing.'

Americans believe if you go to college, you have something to fall back on, which makes sense. I don't have any degrees. If I hadn't become a golfer, I have no idea what I would be doing with my life.

Both of my parents graduated from high school, both attended college, both have government jobs now. They've always been very adamant about me finishing high school and finishing college.

Looking ahead, I believe that the underlying importance of higher education, of science, of technology, of research and scholarship to our quality of life, to the strength of our economy, to our security in many dimensions will continue to be the most important message.

I would like to attend college in the future when I have time. I have always been interested in architecture, so perhaps I would pursue a degree in that or business.

I'm not sure if I'll become Dr. Du Toit. I'm at the early stages of a long journey.

I don't have a career plan. I'm not strategic enough.

I'm sure some people have an absolute grasp of where they are in their careers. I just don't think about it that much.

There is no handbook about how a career is going to go.

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

I guess I hit a point while I was in college when I realized I would have to do something with my life!

I regret to this day that I never went to college. I feel I should have been a doctor.

My career is not well thought out. Every choice has been instinctive and, quite literally, impulsive in many ways.

I don't know how I could plan my career.

I'm not qualified for anything. I've had lots of little jobs, like picking grapes and being a tax man. I can't imagine not writing, because I've done it since I was five or six. Maybe I'd work in academia. That's always what the plan was.

If you had asked me, did I have everything nailed down and wired about what I wanted to do, and was I following some real plan? No. In fact, by the time I was in my mid-20s or even late-20s, and I was still in the law firm, I really was starting to get a little nervous that I didn't know what I was going to do.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.

I'm not great at judging a career. Or planning one.