2 years ago I was half way through my 1 year masters at Nottingham uni. In the past I'd considered doing a PhD but had gradually gone off the idea and instead had decided to do a one year Masters in a topic I found more enjoyable than my degree and then hopefully find some kind of job in this area. Around Christmas time I applied for all the graduate schemes at the large biotech/pharma companies and started taking the online tests and doing telephone and face to face interviews. Slowly one by one the rejections came in.
It was around this time my Mum nagged me about looking in to a PhD again. I had a quick look round a few websites and at the posters stuck up around uni but couldn't find anything particularly interesting. I didn't see the point of signing up to stay on at uni for 3 more years if it was going to be research I had no real interest in, so I was very picky about what I would and wouldn't work on. As Mum's seem to do she wouldn't drop the topic so I told her what I was interested in so she could search the internet (she enjoys having little jobs like that to do). In the mean time I was content with reading my rejection letters. I told her I would only be interested in doing a PhD in structural biology or something antibody related (specifically as a therapeutic but I cant remember if I said that to her or not).
Weeks passed and I kept looking at job advertisements with the occasional email from my mum with a list of potential PhDs, all of which were of no interest to me (my mum is no scientist so tended to forward anything she thought was even slightly relevant). One day she stumbled upon the New Scientist website and saw an advert for a PhD at Leicester doing NMR on therapeutic antibodies as part of a CASE studentship. This covered everything I wanted, it was both structural and antibody related and involved working for a biotech company so would give me links there thus aiding me with a move into this sector.
My mum had never heard of New Scientist until that day, I'm not sure how she stumbled onto the site and the advert but it was perfect for me and to cut a long story short I got the PhD. How has that affected my life? Well I'm now 1.5 years into the PhD, loving every minute of it, got lots of new friends and I met my girlfriend who I've now been going out with for 9 months. My career prospects (assuming I get the PhD) should increase dramatically and instead of receiving rejection letters I should be able to get a research job without too many problems in any kind of biotech/pharma company, with the company partly funding my PhD being my most obvious chance (working for them after my PhD is not written into my contract).
If my Mum hadn't found that advert I wouldn't be at uni doing a PhD*, I wouldn't have fallen in love with a girl at Leicester uni girl and I probably wouldn't have such a great social life with a superb group of friends.
I might not have had so far to travel to see Rovers home games though
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God I've rambled on, shows what a boring night in does to me.
*Well I did apply for a PhD at the Rutherford Appleton Labs but didn't go for the interview because I'd already been given the Leicester position and wasn't so keen on this one especially as it wasn't directly at a university.