“I had a very tangible interaction with a teacher that shaped everything in my life. I'm dyslexic, but I managed to get into a good university in the UK, and I was messing around in a class with 300 students, and the teacher sent me out of the class. But he met me after that class, and he essentially said, ‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’ And I was like, ‘I like ecology, but I just can't keep up. There's too much reading. There's too much statistics.’ And he said, ‘If you like ecology, just find the bits that you like.’ And I just needed to look at the fungi and find them fascinating. And then that gives you positive endorphins when you have a successful experiment. So I just immersed myself in the parts that I enjoyed and through that process, things started to go really well and my degree went really well. And then after that, my career sort of exploded. And genuinely, I know if I had not encountered that professor, there's no way my career would have gone in the direction it has done. And I just think teachers are unbelievable inspirers, not necessarily for the knowledge they give you, but more for just inspiring you to follow your own your own path, your own trajectory.”

Broadcast on:

17 Jan 2024