When I left university, I didn't want to jump into anything right away. Music certainly wasn't a burning ambition.
I only applied for 'Countdown' as a bit of a laugh while applying for lots of other graduate jobs. I've had some amazing opportunities, and I've loved every minute.
My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to the pervasive class consciousness of the place and time.
One of the biggest questions that we hear from young graduates is, 'I'm not even sure where to start because I'm not quite sure who I want to be yet.'
The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York city, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered. was not all that interested.
I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.
When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.
When I was running the marathons in Munich, I always trained by myself. Between the demands of graduate work and a young family, I had to train at unusual hours. A few times, I ran home from my lab late at night, which was 20 kilometers out of town.
My scientific pursuits have led to many opportunities and responsibilities beyond those of simply doing research. For example, as a beginning graduate student, it never occurred to me that the life of a scientist could involve so much travel, something that I have always loved.
After graduating in International Relations in 2011, I turned down safe, corporate job offers and instead accepted a position at an 'incubator' in L.A. - a tech word for a team of people who are funded by investors to create apps. I knew the future was digital and that I had to take a risk.
I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.
my advice to every student who is trying to make a decision for the years immediately after graduation: take the opportunity that in your mind is the most rewarding, that you are most passionate about and that you find most interesting and save the rest of your life for being risk averse. Whatever you want to do, this is the time to pursue it. Twenty years from now, your freedom to take risks will be limited.
