1646 – Issue 2

Since I had a fascination with Biology I decided to apply for Medicine at university. Unfortunately, I missed out on the A grade in Chemistry needed to apply. It would have been very easy to become disheartened at this point, however, I didn’t give up. I applied to Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leicester. This allowed me to continue studying something I was passionate about. One of the biggest learnings I’ve had so far is that the route to starting on a happy and promising career is not always predictable or clear. Part of my initial desire to study Medicine was that it seemed the clearest route to a stable career. However, just because a career path is stable doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you. There are a wealth of opportunities away from traditional graduate schemes, for example, there are huge numbers of start-up companies that are looking to hire graduates. I wish that someone told me earlier that these opportunities existed and that taking them is nowhere near as risky as it appears. If they had it would have saved me a lot of stress while I was struggling to make progress with endless applications to graduate schemes. After graduating with a Masters degree in Molecular Medicine from York and having failed to make any significant progress with graduate scheme applications, I was very fortunate to hear that the brother of my friend from Reading Blue Coat had founded a start-up company in the technology and bioscience sphere. The company is called Labstep. Its mission is to help scientists record their research in a more reproducible way, by providing a free cloud-based online tool for them to record and share their research. Given my science background and the fact I was really interested in technology, I tentatively At the beginning of my final year at Reading Blue Coat I had no idea which career to pursue. All I could think was that I would end up in a stereotypical office job. Fortunately, with the help of Blue Coat’s career advisors and certain teachers I was persuaded to aim for a more specific goal and not just drift towards something I had no interest in. Ditching outdated research recording methods By Tom Ashcroft (2014) 12