How did I find physics?

I suppose my story starts with the most cliché influence a physicist could have. Star Trek. One afternoon my parents sat me down to watch the Voyage Home filled with whales and nuclear wessles and that was it. That evening I started watching Voyager (when it was back on BBC2 ) and thus began the three appointments a week I had with the crews of the Enterprise, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Needless to say, I began to really think about whether there was life on other planets, what could nanotechnology do and what was real space travel like. Luckily my parents were more than happy to facilitate my interest in science and trips to the science museum, nuclear power stations, nuclear bunkers I suppose in many ways my continued fascination with space and all things nuclear spurred me on to do triple science at GCSE so I could (hopefully) study science in a bit more detail. 

However, when I started my GCSEs I'd had another 2 influences actting on my life; the internet and the Lord of the Rings. The combined effect was that I thought I wanted to go into computer science and specialise in computer generated graphics for games and films which was further fuelled by the contrast between my not so good physics teacher (I did a lot of sticking the syllabus into my book over those two years) and my fantastic IT teacher. However, things began to change when I saw a documentary on BBC4, Dr. Michio Kaku's Time (currently available on youtube here). Time was a revelation, it introduced me to the ideas of general relativity and told me that time travel and worm hole's might just be possible within the theoretical limits of the universe. What more would you need to hear to inspire a Whovian or Trekkie to give physics another look? Soon after Time aired I prepared for my end of year 10 exams, and suddenly realised from reading the text book the material I had been taught in physics classes was actually interesting. It described how things moved and how we powered our homes along with so many other things. And I wanted to explore and find out more. I wanted to know how nuclear fission worked, I wanted to know why cells keep us alive, I wanted to know more about the atom. So it became obvious, I needed to do A-level physics. Don't get me wrong I still loved IT and originally thought I'd do A-level computing too, but in the end I was guided into further maths with promises of improved chances of entry to Computer Science at university.

I'm happy to say it was the right choice. At college I had 2 fantastic physics teachers who not only made sure we learnt the material, but also gave us the feeling of how wonderful it was to use physics to describe the world. But I still had my eye on what I wanted to do after university. Should I do engineering, should I do computer science or should I do physics? The more I read, the more I realised that doing physics wouldn't box me in like computer science or engineering might, it would leave my options open. I don't know exactly when I decided, but I came to the conclusion that physics was the subject for me. It was during my UCAS prep that I really began to fall in love with physics. I read 'In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat' by John Gribbin, I attempted to read 'The Road to Reality' by Roger Penrose which was mostly over my head but introduced me to some really cool concepts in cosmology and I devoured QED by Richard Feynman. These books showed me that you didn't have to look into deep space to find the extraordinary; the extraordinary was around us every day. We live in a crazy quantum world filled with beauty and contradiction and I needed to understand it. 

The rest, as they say, is history. I applied to universities with strong focusses on quantum technologies and nanotechnology, got my degree and as I write this, I'm sitting at a desk in the experimental quantum information office. It was a long road to get here, but I found my way in time. I suppose it’s true that inspiration can be found in the strangest of places, so always keep an open mind and you never know where you may end up!