Calum: It becomes a, a bit of a, a journey, let’s say, in terms of figuring yourself out, and I think it, it strangely, almost becomes a little bit addictive. 

Chris: Hi, welcome to Potential, a podcast from the White Rose Industrial Physics Academy, in which we talk to physics students about the good times, the hard times, the ups and the downs of starting a career about falling over, and then picking yourself back up again, about finding your path and then changing direction completely. If you are in the middle of your degree and wondering what happens next? We’re here to help. I’m Chris Stewart, your podcast host for today. In this episode, we’re going to explore the world of, well exploring the world, whether it’s some study abroad during your degree, some time off before you get a real job, or starting a career that flings you around the globe travel is transformative. Experiencing different cultures can be enriching and eye-opening… 

Calum: It was my first experience travelling outside of Europe. I learned an incredible amount about myself. 

Chris: Or it can be weird and wonderful… 

Lottie: I took some work up in Finland, in Lapland as basically a christmas elf. 

Chris: Or it can be challenging and intense…

Harry: The food’s completely different and the language is completely different and it is hot and it’s humid. It’s, it’s a lot to take in. 

Chris: But whenever you do it, however you do it, mixing travel with study or work can be a life-changing experience, and that’s what this episode is all about. We’ll hear from a bunch of physics graduates who took on the world, some for short periods of time, some forever, but all of them learned a huge amount from the experience. We’ll hear from Calum… 

Calum: I am an associate in the internal order division at Goldman Sachs in New York.

Chris: And Lottie… 

Lottie: My background is very much within private equity investments. I am the head of advisory and head of the Abu Dhabi office for a company called ORC. 

Chris: And kicking off our globe trotting episode…

Harry: So my name’s Harry Phillips. I am currently a teacher at Yewlands Academy, which is in North Sheffield. 

Chris: As the old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And for many people that first step of independence is about starting university. Harry grew up in Sheffield and wanted to move away from home for university, so he packed his bags for the long journey to York.

Harry: I wanted to be away enough from home that I was somewhere new and I couldn’t constantly be dropped in on by my parents, but close enough to home so that, for instance, when I dislocated my knee playing rugby, uh, my mum was able to come and collect me. I wasn’t in Portsmouth. It wasn’t a five hour drive.

Chris: Because sometimes we all just want someone to come and pick us up and make it all better. For some though it’s a slightly bigger step. Calum moved up to Yorkshire for university to get away from the big city. 

Calum: The university experience was never gonna be something in London like I wanted a campus university, not where you’re in the manness of the city, where you can kind of tuck away and, and focus on the things that you need to, and almost be in a little cocoon, sheltered learning, growing. And then you can eventually turn into this big butterfly and, and float off into the big wide world and, and take on all the, uh, all the things that are out there for you. 

Chris: And maybe that first step away from home is big enough, but for some, it’s just the start of a much bigger journey. Seeing different places, experiencing different cultures, well it can open your mind. How do you reconcile the desire to explore the world and the need to get your degree done and start a career? You’ve got some long summer breaks during your undergrad degree, you’re probably going to need to work to support yourself. You could try to combine a summer job with a bit of travel like Lottie did. 

Lottie: Second year christmas I, I took some work up in Finland in Lapland. I was basically a Christmas elf for a travel company, which was um, that was fun and I was always intrigued to be immersed in different cultures, different countries. 

Chris: Harry did something similar using the summer break to work overseas and take a good look around.

Harry: In the summer of first year, I did, um, camp America, so I think I left about a week or two after finals exams of first year and got back from the US About a week before September restarted. I spent three months working in Camp America in a month travelling the US afterwards, uh, summer of second year, I did three months in China. It fits right in, like in these programs are designed around university students coz they want kind of the academic excellence and the, the reliability that comes with it. 

Chris: We’ll explore Harry’s story some more because for him, the desire to travel during his degree actually helped define the direction of his career. See, originally he’d been imagining he would end up in a good job in the city, something in accountancy or finance. 

Harry: But then drawing second year, it’s very much a kind of fork in the road type moment. Um, I was filling out a application for a second year summer internship for, I think it was Deloitte or something, one of the big four accountancy firms. And it was just that box where it says, why do you want to do this? 

Chris: And he froze. He couldn’t even think of an answer… 

Harry: And so I just closed the window. I just closed the application, never finished it.

Chris: And that was when he first really started thinking ahead about what comes next. 

Harry: Because as soon as I closed that down, I was like, well, what? What do I want to do then? And it turned out not accountancy was the answer. That’s one of the defining moments in that period of time. It was very much a case of, well, I’m, I’m not finished being young and travelling and exploring and things.

Chris: So instead of a summer internship in an accountancy firm…

Harry: I’d studied Mandarin at school and so I found, um, an au pairing scheme based in China. I applied for the au pair scheme and within like three weeks I’d been accepted. Not a gruelling process. It was, it was quite an enjoyable three months. 

Chris: The other way that you can get some travel in while you are finishing your degree is through a year of study abroad. Remember Calum whose dream of doing some travelling after his degree had unravelled a bit? 

Calum: A few friends on my physics course were talking about their physics degrees with years in Europe. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. I did a bit of Spanish at school, you know, maybe I could go to Madrid for a term or something. I’ll just figure it out. And so they literally dragged me along to, I think it’s called the Global Opportunities Fair at York. And there was a a stand, and it was kind of like non-European exchange programs. There was America, there was Canada, and then there was Australia. And I was like, oh, Australia, that sounds right up my street.

Chris: Calum wound up doing a year at the University of Western Australia in Perth. 

Calum: I learned an incredible amount about myself personally and academically. They do a more elective based kind of university experience, so you have your core focus areas, obviously for me with physics, but then it gave me the opportunity to delve into kind of topics that I thought may be useful, going forward in terms of when I get back to York, what would be good to have on the CV. 

Chris: Okay, so travel during your degree is an option, but then eventually you might need to get a job. That doesn’t mean an end to world exploration though for Harry, quite the opposite. His time in China is an au pair simply wetted his appetite. I asked him whether that summer spent developing his language skills had satisfied his interest in immersing himself in another culture.

Harry: Um, no. I, I realised that I was not done. I had a really good three months. 

Chris: The thing is, the more he learned the language and the culture, the more valuable those things became. 

Harry: So learning Mandarin, it was very, very useful and day-to-day useful, every step of it, constantly. So it’s a very rewarding experience and I wanted to keep living that and keep developing that skill for whatever I then decided to do in the future.

Chris: So during his third year at university, Harry focused on how to get back to China. 

Harry: China’s got a huge population. They don’t need labour. They’ve got a very well educated population. So either you get there as a 40 year old engineer who’s head of his firm and is being sent out to make the factory do it the right way, or you’re an English teacher or you’re a student, which is what I managed to get.

Chris: Harry started with an intense year of learning Mandarin at a Chinese university, and then turned that into a job teaching English in a school in Beijing. Now, maybe you’re wondering at this point, what’s the use of a physics degree if you’re going to China to learn Mandarin to teach English? I put that question to Harry. 

Harry: Mandarin and all that kind of study are very, very different to what I was doing, but you know now as what, being five years out of my degree, I can’t remember the equations for fields and waves and springs and all that kind of stuff. I can’t remember any of that. But the style of thinking is very much what sticks and it’s like; cause, effect, solution, bam! Let’s just go! And I, you know, I very much, it’s something I try and do with my students. It’s, it’s the style I try and teach and it’s the style I try and think in is break it down; part, part, through. It’s the most valuable thing I got from my course in terms of academic and thought style and whatnot without even particularly realising.

Chris: Turns out those times you get told during your degree about all the transferrable skills you’re getting. Yeah, that’s all true. 

Let’s check in on Lottie again. Now, remember Lottie, she was the Christmas elf in Lapland. Lottie’s story of work and travel is, well, it’s a bit of a whirlwind really. It begins in her final year of her physics degree at Leeds, where she was figuring out what she wanted to do next. Finance had always been on her radar and she had really hoped to find something with opportunities for travel. Then a careers talk from a Leeds physics alumnus encouraged her to explore working in intellectual property. Towards the end of her degree, she applied for a position in an IP firm, was pretty quickly offered the role, and everything was going smoothly.

Lottie: I accepted the role. It was based in Sheffield. I’d found myself, uh, accommodation, and I was kind of committed to moving there. And then a friend of mine at a recruitment firm messaged me about this job in finance and it kind of reminded me that that was what I wanted to do in the first place. So I interviewed for it, uh, knowing that I already had the job in Sheffield, but I thought I would try and explore, see what it was about.

Chris: She didn’t get the finance job, somebody else did. But nevermind, she already had a job lined up, remember? So that’s all fine… 

Lottie: But then I got a call on my graduation day saying that their first choice had dropped out. Um, and they wanted to see if I could, if I did want to join, could I be in Philadelphia on Monday? 

Chris: So, let’s recap, shall we? Lottie had a job lined up in Sheffield, then she applied for a finance job in London. Didn’t get it. And then did get it on her graduation day, and could she fly to the USA in a couple of days for several months training please? Fortunately the Sheffield IP firm were very understanding, and so off to Philadelphia she flew!

Lottie: So I did the training in Philadelphia and then I came back to London and the job in included quite a bit of travel around Europe, but I was still desperate to live and work abroad somewhere.

Chris: The London job gave her the chance to travel, but what she really wanted was the experience of living in another country.

Lottie: Particularly I wanted to move to Dubai into the Middle East coz my brother and his wife were here. So I was, kind of three years into my career trying to persuade them that I could open an office for them in Dubai. Um, which to which they told me that I wasn’t quite the right profile.

Chris: Being very early in her career, of course, Lottie took her employer’s advice and stayed in London, right? No. The desire to see the world and live in another place won that tug of war. To test her resolve, she visited her brother for a couple of weeks and then things got a bit awkward with her employer in London…

Lottie: So I came out to Dubai. I visited for 10 days, and during that period I’d actually won an award at my company for, um, kind of commitment and loyalty to the firm. Uh, and then I loved Dubai. Uh, I landed back in London, handed my notice in that day. 

Chris: ‘Thanks for the loyalty award. So here’s my resignation!’ 

Lottie: Uh, and within a month I was gone. You kind of doubt things if, if it’s the right decision, are you letting people down? Uh, but I had had a bit of an itch for probably about nine months before that kind of investigating different opportunities. So I knew that I wasn’t happy in that role that I was, um, I was carrying out, uh, and suddenly didn’t look back at all as soon as I had decided that.

Chris: You kind of get the feeling that once she’s made a plan, Lottie’s not the kind of person who’s gonna be put off!

So let’s check in with Calum now. After he finished his year of study in Australia and returned to York to complete his physics degree, he also aimed to get a job in finance. After a lot of applications and a lot of rejections, he landed a role with Deutsche Bank. It all started pretty quietly, a nice gentle transition…

Calum: For about a week, actually not even a week, maybe a day or two. Um, and then they started giving me work to do and I was like, okay, this is, uh, I learned very quickly that I’m gonna end up in the, in the deep end. Quite a lot of the time in this kind of transition from physics to finance was, I might have the, the quantitative skill set had a very small understanding of how the financial world worked itself.

Chris: And for Calum, who’d caught the travel bug in Australia, there were some new opportunities for travel. 

Calum: I think it was the end of my first week, they were talking about, um, this project that needed to be run in Ireland and I was like, ooh, a bit of travel. Go then why not? And I was, I was pretty much perpetually confused for those, those three weeks trying to figure out what the hell was going on, what I was actually meant to do, and then how I was gonna kind of justify being over there when I got back to London.

Chris: Clearly though, what he was feeling was common or garden variety new job doubt. Because when he did get back to London…

Calum: I must have done something right. Because two months after that they’re like, hey, we’re doing a similar project in the Middle East. We’ll send you out to the Middle East. And again, kind of out there very confused what was going on. Culturally, obviously quite, quite different and a very different experience, but kind of figured out when I’m thrown in the deep end, I just need to one; learn how to float and once I can float, then I can learn how to swim.

Chris: Which is a fantastic philosophy that we explore more in the potential podcast episode on imposter syndrome. So make sure you check that one out! 

Calum: And so I did 18 months, let’s say, with, you know, a little bit of travel, learning all these different topic areas in very different locations. Like, you know, if you take the same business and you run it in London versus run it in Dubai versus run it in New York, they’re gonna be three very different scenarios. But then Deutsche Bank was going through some broader kind of, um, organisational change. And the team that did the primary travel that I was really enjoying doing all these different topic areas with was being moved from London to Frankfurt. 

Chris: Calum was enjoying the experience of travelling and learning about the business, but he didn’t really want to move to Frankfurt. Faced with either going with his team or staying in London in a different role, he decided to make a third option for himself. 

Calum: In the summer of 2019, I moved from, um, Deutsche Bank to Goldman Sachs in London with a view on, you know, maybe doing a year or two proving my worth, and then looking for potential kind of longer term opportunities abroad within the firm to kind of learn and, and grow.

Chris: And so at the end of 2019, Calum finally completed the move from Old York to New York. He did some work with his new employer, Goldman Sachs, in New York, and spent Christmas 2019 with family up in Canada. 

Calum: And someone was like, hey, you should, you know, come out and, and work in the New York office full-time. And I was like, well, you know what? Great, let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. Got back to London, mid Jan, 2020. I was like, okay, great. I just, I’ll just hang out for a couple of months here. Wait for all this stuff to get sorted. I’ll be on a plane to New York. 

Chris: That was early 2020 and we all know what happened then. Gradually and then frighteningly quickly, the Covid pandemic took hold and the world shut down. Calum resigned himself to staying in London, working on Zoom from his old childhood bedroom, building his skills and knowledge, and biding his time for the chance to come again to move to New York. 

Calum: It was a little bit of a wait, let’s call it 18, 20 months, but got here in one piece in the end!

Chris: So we’ve heard from Harry, Lottie, and Calum about how they ended up turning a physics degree into a new life in Beijing, Dubai, New York. But what we haven’t heard yet is what’s it like moving yourself across the globe? Lottie probably had the easiest ride of the three.

Lottie: The weather helped, the kind of blue skies, sunshine. I thought this is definitely the right decision for me. 

Chris: Because she was moving from a respected finance company in London, she could use some connections to help line up a new job. 

Lottie: I had about 15 different interviews lined up. I found a job within about 10 days, and it was a very easy transition, actually. There was a lot of people from all different cultures around the world, uh, and I felt like I, I slotted in quite easily and quite, quite quickly. 

Chris: When you move to a new place, it can be strange, confronting and lonely. You want to establish a community of new friends and colleagues as soon as possible. 

Lottie: I joined a company called Mercer, which I think has 60,000 people worldwide, so it was a very big recognized name. I knew that they would have kind of a good culture, and they did. They, they treated me very well. They gave me time to like, get things set up. They, they were very helpful actually. 

Chris: Dubai is a big place, very different to London and as Calum found out, so is New York. 

Calum: The New York that you see on the television and, and movie screen is very different from the madness of reality here. Day-to-day life, let’s say, don’t get me wrong, there’s still the glitz and glamour and the concrete jungle and times square lights that will kind of scorch your eyes coz they’re so bright. But also like New York is, is very different from London, from any kind of broader European city. 

Chris: But as big and strange as New York was, Calum had something he could rely on.

Calum: There’s a lot of experiences that I’ve put myself out all and got that I can now reflect on and give me kind of peace and solace in a next step. And so I remember getting on the plane to Australia at 19 having never been outside of Europe and not knowing a single person in this country that I was moving to for a year. I was like, now versus moving to the states, well, you know, I’ve got my company to fall back on. I happen to know quite a few people out here through, through work anyway, so I was like, okay, I’ve got, you know, that kind of baseline above and beyond what I had before. And I was like, okay. It gives me the, the springboard to kind of go out and, and do all these things. So it wasn’t as daunting. 

Chris: Of our three graduates, Harry’s experience was probably the most challenging. What was it like stepping off the plane from England to China? 

Harry: It’s a lot. For people who haven’t lived in East or Southeast Asia, it’s quite difficult to think of some of the scale sometimes, it’s just completely different. Like, York is entirely walkable. You can live in York without a car, certainly with a bike, you’re fine in, in Beijing, you’re just, you’re not. Like, it’s, it’s ridiculously huge. And so it’s, there’s a lot to take in. 

Chris: And remember Harry had already done this. He’d previously jumped on a plane from Yorkshire to Beijing for three months during his degree.

Harry: And you get off the plane in Beijing, uh, at the end of August and it’s hot and it’s humid every now and again. There’s a smog day. It’s the food’s completely different and the language is completely different and you can’t make sense of yourself. And yeah, it’s, it’s a lot to take in. 

Chris: But now he was moving over there for a few years, at least, he had two options, teaching or studying.

Harry: I first got an offer to teach English at a school in a city called Shijingshan, which is an industrial hellscape. 

Chris: Fortunately, that wasn’t the only offer…

Harry: The other option was a scholarship to study at, uh, Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Half an hour by bullet train from Beijing. Um, so much more livable, much nicer city. And it was a scholarship, so tuition was paid for. I got a living stipend, I got a dorm room. Um, everything was sorted. It was essentially just transplanting university life, 5,000 miles east.

Chris: Slotting into a typical university experience was a bit of a lifeline in such a strange new world.

Harry: So it, there was support structures, there was a familiar lifestyle. It was, okay, here’s your, here’s your class timetable. You know, here are your classmates. You’ll have exams at the end of term. Obviously it’s different in China, but it was similar enough that it’s very much transplantable. 

Chris: After one year when his Mandarin course came to an end, Harry wanted to stay in China, which meant he needed money.

Harry: So that’s when I took a job teaching English to Chinese kids at a Chinese state school in Beijing. I was the only non-Chinese on campus. I was in very much an immersive environment. I still had time for lessons. I was doing self-study, um, and it just gave me more time, more life, some stability and some foundations. Like I had a room, I had a job, I had hours and blar de blar de blar. 

Chris: But without the structure and peer networks of the university, it just wasn’t easy settling into the new job.

Harry: That was probably the more difficult transition. I was the only, uh, non-chinese on my campus. And a very, very limited social circle. All my colleagues were in their mid thirties and had kids. I was setting myself up again for the third time of the second time in two years. 

Chris: So what can we learn from all of this? Lottie had a pretty easy landing in Dubai. Calum got to New York, eventually, and Harry pushed through and spent an amazing few years in China. But what have they learned from it all?

For Lottie, setting yourself up far from home in a new place and a new job is all about solid networks. 

Lottie: So the job that I ended up taking with Mercer, um, I had actually met someone the week before when I was in London at a drinks networking event, and he connected me ‘cause I said that I was going out to Dubai. I didn’t have a job. Um, I was very opportunistic. See where, what things happened. 

Chris: Even her old London employer, which she left behind, was happy to connect her with people in Dubai, and that’s because it’s all about helping each other. 

Lottie: As soon as you are kind of open and honest about things people were keen to make introductions and help out. And my, my London employer, um, had also been very helpful with setting me up with, uh, potential interviews. I’m willing to help people as well. I’m willing to give out free introductions and meetings and free information because I know that I think the world’s getting smaller and smaller. Um, and you never know kind of when these references or things get picked up again in the future. 

Chris: For Calum, when you are forging new networks and friendships, when you’ve move to a new place, it’s important to remember…

Calum: You are not actually the first person to ever do this in the world. There are quite a few people that have been on similar journeys, and, and are in similar places to you. And you have a lot more in common with people in your new place than you probably first realised. It’s twofold I’d say it’s one, figuring out where the, the commonalities are, let’s say, between what you know and where you are now. And then two, finding similarly like-minded people who’ve made very similar journeys and, and having that kind of broad network to tap into, to speak to, to socialise with. 

Chris: So use your interests, your hobbies, or in Calum’s case…

Calum: For me, the great medium for that has always been sport. Since I moved here, I’ve dusted off my football boots or soccer cleats, should I call them these days. And my, my poor little hockey stick that hasn’t had use for, uh, a significant amount of time. 

Chris: Discovering new places, meeting new people. It’s all an amazing way to learn about yourself. 

Calum: You realize, especially in big cities, they’re a kind of a melting pot of, of lots of people’s shared experiences. Through all those different viewpoints, all those different experiences, you learn a tremendous amount about yourself. You learn like what makes you you from a personal standpoint. And then, you know, for the uni experience at UWA, it was, you know, what made me academically and what was I, what was I focused on, what was I most interested in? And now in a professional setting, which, you know, what’s, what’s most important to me career-wise, it becomes a, a bit of a, a, a journey, let’s say, in, in terms of, um, figuring yourself out and I think strangely, almost becomes a little bit addictive.

Chris: And what about Harry? When he first went to China as an au pair, he threw himself at meeting people and getting out and about.  

Harry: For the first week I essentially, I think I just blitzed through it. I just threw myself at everything. Went out every single day. Tried to find other au pairs, did a couple of, you know, had some Mandarin lessons and just was busy, busy, busy, busy, busy and kind of like, I kind of overwhelmed myself. And so that’s why I think the homesickness and the kind of tiredness hit more in the second week. ‘Cause after a week of that, I was a little bit taken aback. 

Chris: Sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the reality of your situation to properly sink in. 

Harry: Oh, I am 5,000 miles from home and I, it is quite a lot, and if I get lost, I am a bit screwed and I can’t communicate with people at all. And so the second week I very much stayed more in my room and was a bit quieter and a bit more withdrawn. It’s that forcing yourself to get out and get over it and push yourself that gets you through. Third week, I was like, right, I was miserable last week. I wasn’t miserable in first week. What was the difference? Well, the first week I went out, well do that then.  

Chris: Most people in a new place with few, if any friends or family around, would struggle for a bit at least. So it’s important to know, it’s natural to feel that way. And it’s vital to give yourself a little bit of time and then do what you can to push past it. When he returned to China after his physics degree to start his language course, Harry thought it would be easier this time.

Harry: And I had, um, an awful time. I was like, oh god, I’ve committed to this. I’ve got a scholarship and I’ve said I’ll get a Tianjin for six months. And I was, you know, cutting costs and my friends were not as free as often as I presumed they would be. So I was by myself quite a bit for a couple of weeks. So I was, I was struggling a bit for the first couple weeks when I then got to university and I got to that familiarity into that structure very quickly became okay. phew. That wasn’t a mistake. I just had a bad couple of weeks. Um, I just had to push through. As soon as, as soon as things got into the full swing, it was, it was much more comfortable.

Chris: Though it’s tempting to retreat to your room with a TV and take away food… 

Harry: You will be miserable if you sit in your hostel hotel room, dorm room, uh, flat. 

You, you, you will be, because you would be miserable if you were doing that in your hometown and you’d have family nearby. You just gotta get out of your comfort zone constantly, and you’ve just got to find hobbies and interests. There’s always something, even if you’re not particularly interested in that thing, find something you’re vaguely interested in and use it as a way to meet people. The important thing is to make those contacts. 

Chris: The bad times won’t last forever. And remember, good choices still come with side effects. 

Harry: Even when you make a good decision, there may be parts of that decision that are uncomfortable or are difficult or put you in a, um, difficult period. That doesn’t necessarily mean the decision was wrong. That’s just the way life is. Good times, bad times. Um, I’ve been very fortunate that I do seem to have made a pretty decent series of decisions so far. 

Chris: One of those decent decisions involves his partner who he met while studying in China, and that relationship could have been a cosy little cocoon. Starting a new job in Beijing Harry knew if things were too hard, he could just go back to stay with her but…

Harry: But, I, again, I really wanted, I gave myself like a few weeks. I was like, for a few weeks I’m just gonna stay in Beijing and try and meet people and try and push myself out. And it, you know, I remember going to Tianjin after the first kind of stint where I’d been really kind of, I’m gonna try and do it, try and meet people. And I, I basically had failed in that first three weeks and I went to see her and I was like, ah, it’s not, not entirely great. Was it the right decision to go to Beijing? You know, it got better over time. I just had to keep, keep trying, tried, failed, tried, failed. Tried and eventually succeeded!

Chris: The two of them eventually moved back to the UK and now work in the education system in Yorkshire. And building self-reliance and learning to push through the difficult bits is core to Harry’s teaching philosophy.

I think to sum up this episode of Potential we’ll handover to Calum. Several months into his new life in New York… 

Calum: Do I see myself here forever? Absolutely not. Do I see myself here over the medium term? Probably. But you know, like, okay, well I’ve had this wonderful experience here. I’ve learned so much about myself here. If I throw myself into a completely different end of the world, what could I learn about myself there? Like I’ve only ever lived in, in English speaking countries. If I put myself out my comfort zone somewhere else, like what? What more could I learn? What more could I see? How more could I kind of grow?

Chris: A little postscript to this episode. A few weeks after we recorded his interview for the podcast. Harry got in touch to say he just accepted a teaching position at an international school in China, and he and his partner would shortly be, once again, moving their lives around the world. 

You’ve been listening to Potential, a podcast for physics students. Huge thanks to all of our wise physics graduates for sharing their experiences so openly and honestly. The show is produced and presented by me, Chris Stewart, and brought to you by WRIPA, the White Rose Industrial Physics Academy, a collaboration of five university physics departments all working together to better prepare students for graduate level technical employment.