When I started to take part in Olympiads most thrilling thing for me was to connect with mathematicians in real life. I remember how I followed my leader and deputy leaders around just like how a five-year-old follows their teenage sibling. I asked about all sorts of things, their research subject, their time in college, their love story with maths… I soaked up this information faster than Spongebob.
At that time I was still unsure about what to study in the future, I swayed from studying theoretical physics to theatre stage design in the span of one day. In the end it was these encounters that finally helped me make up my mind, and I think it was one of the most valuable take aways from the Olympiad journey.
We think that many secondary school students are probably facing the same dilemma of choosing their dream course, and we thought it would be great if we could post a series of interviews with people in the STEM field so that people can see their experiences. Hopefully these would prove to be entertaining as well as helpful, and would help students make up their minds about the future.