Are you about to graduate with a BSc in chemistry, with a good chance of having an upper second or first class honours degree? Will you have an MChem or MSc in chemistry or a very similar subject, such as biochemistry or chemical physics? Then you could consider making a career out of doing chemistry. The way to do that is to take another degree.
Chemistry is the science of everyday life. Everything you have done so far today involves chemistry. Washing with soap is a chemical process. Cooking and eating food are chemical processes. Sewage treatment is mostly chemistry. The clothes you are wearing are made largely of synthetic fibres and are coloured by synthetic dyestuffs. The medicine you may have taken was produced by chemists. The radio and television you had on contain electronic devices made by chemists, as does your cassette recorder and its tape. The fuel your train, bus or car used was made by a chemist, and so was most of the material the vehicle was made of.
Chemistry controls the environment. Water has to be kept clean, the air has to be safe, crops must be kept clean, and the fertilisers and sprays must be safe for everyone except the pests. Chemists do the analyses which tell us how it is all happening, and chemists have to find solutions to the problems that come up.
Your chemistry degree can help you to get into this world. You will probably start by doing a Ph.D, most of which are about some piece of abstract chemistry. How do we synthesise this particular new type of organic compound? What are the curious magnetic properties of this metal complex? Why does this reaction go faster than that other one? The methods you learn in your three years tackling these problems will be the methods you will use when you work for a pharmaceutical firm, an oil company, or an environmental agency. You will learn how to design an experiment that is successful and safe, how to analyse the outcome of your experiment, to interpret what it means and to design more work to follow it up. You will learn all sorts of computing and statistical skills, how to find out what your predecessor scientists have done, and how to write it all up in reports and papers, culminating in your PhD thesis. You will learn how to present your results in poster displays and by giving lectures, and how to work with your contemporaries in the laboratory team. You will meet people older than yourself at conferences, as well as senior academic scientists, such as your supervisor, and learn how to handle them. All these things will be an education for life. And employers know that.
You may not be ambitious for research, so why not do a Master's degree instead? Many of these are designed to train you for a particular career in a specific aspect of chemistry, and you should take one of these if you specially wanted to be an analytical chemist (lots of jobs), a pharmaceutical chemist (lots of jobs) or a forensic scientist (not so many jobs, but growing).
Have you thought about where you would like to work? Pick a department with a high research rating, visit it and meet the individual who will supervise your research. If either they or the topic are not immediately attractive, go somewhere else. There is plenty of good research done in departments outside research grade 5, though it is conventional wisdom to suppose otherwise. Consider the location, just as you did when you were looking for your first degree university, although postgraduate work will take up much more of your time, so you will probably have neither time nor money for lots of nights out.
One problem most people face is whether to stay at their first university for their postgraduate work. There are points both ways. You may have been very happy where you started, liking the staff and general ambience of the place, so stay, always assuming the research is right for you. But there is a lot to be said for a move; you will meet more people, and a new challenge is always good, again assuming the research is right. I did my BSc in Nottingham and my PhD in Newcastle, and loved them both. One thing you must have is the hunger to do chemistry. Research is very demanding of time, effort and emotion, so if you don't have a passion for it, don't start. There are lots of easier ways of earning a living.
Author
Peter Thornton
Senior Lecturer in Chemistry
Queen Mary and Westfield College
