• Question: Do you use all subjects you studied? And have you used subjects you didnt study?

    Asked by bene534ecru34 on 24 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Cerys Cooper

      Cerys Cooper answered on 24 Nov 2025:

      I definitely think so. Especially for A levels because those subjects directly affected what degree I could go into. Even at GCSE, subjects like Drama and History which I did, although not directly linked to my career now definitely helped me when it came to skills like presenting and thinking critically. I think there can be something to take from every subject. In terms of subjects I didn’t study, I’ve picked up a lot of computer science skills throughout my degree which, looking back, would have been a good subject to do at GCSE, but I managed just fine without it 🙂

    • Photo: Luke Humphrey

      Luke Humphrey answered on 24 Nov 2025:

      Yes definitely (to both).

      What’s especially useful isn’t necessarily the content of your school subjects, but learning skills and techniques. If you can learn to apply skills from one subject in another domain, it’ll serve you really well.

      As one example, the skills I’ve learned from my history lessons (questioning the biases of your sources) and from English language lessons (writing clear and convincing arguments) are useful for writing scientific papers.

      As an example of the second question, I didn’t study chemistry to GCSE level, but then it started to become a gap in my knowledge later on at university and in my research so I had to catch up. It’s useful to know how you study/learn most effectively (it’s different for everyone!) and knowing who/when/how to ask for support.

    • Photo: Margaret Duff

      Margaret Duff answered on 1 Dec 2025:

      A good question!

      Sometimes it is exactly those parts of subjects that I think will never be useful again, are the ones that I use all the time now!

      I didn’t enjoy physics at school or at uni, I thought that I didn’t have good intuition about what is happening and that there wasn’t enough maths! Now, I work with physicists everyday and yes, we have different perspectives on a problem, but the stuff that I learned many years ago is still useful for helping us have good conversations

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    For A levels I would say I use bit of almost every subject I studied, even languages as I’ve had the chance to work in countries where being able to speak/understand French has enabled me to communicated directly with local vets, owners, government officials for example.
    For my vet degree, I don’t use or remember every part of the degree simply because it’s not generally possible to work regularly with every species of animal that we learn about at university (our key species were cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep and pigs, with some ‘exotic’ species such as reptiles, small mammals (like rabbits and hamsters) and as a vet I need to know when I can apply what I learned at vet school directly and when I need to recognise differences – so for example, I need to be aware that donkeys are different from horses, and not just assume that everything I learned about horses can be directly translated into diagnosing or treating donkeys.