So I have a zoology degree

If you have had a look at my CV you may have noticed that I also have a degree in Zoology, if you have not been to see my CV, well surprise, I have a degree in Zoology. As this is generally not the norm I thought I would tell you the story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down.

 

It all started when I was deciding what I wanted to do at university, as I was very unsure about what I wanted to do with my life, so I applied for a couple of different courses, this included fun things such as; Engineering, Neurology, Zoology, and CGT.

If I'm being honest I wasn't ready to leave home at that point in my life, so I decided to do a BSc Zoology at Aberdeen Uni, 'cause you know, Blue Planet was cool. Thus began a new chapter in my life, one where I got to learn a tonne of fun facts about animals, like that octopuses are basically just really cool slugs. However, by the time third year came along I had started having doubts about my degree and if it was the right choice for me, although I still had no idea what was. That was until one fated day where that all changed.

 

I was in a lecture about various parasites that exist when one caught my attention, enter Toxoplasma gondii a lovely wee chap whos main goal in life is to get to into a cat's brain where it can hopefully meet a nice lady T. gondii and make some little gondii babies. How it gets there is the cool part, basically it infects mice and then literally changes their brain to the mice like cats. The infected mouse then goes up to a cat, thinking they are great friends and asks the cat what he's been up to since last they spoke, the cat's response to this is to promptly eat the mouse. The gondiis then all high five and make their way to said cat's brain and, as they're in the late stages of their life, promptly start nuking everyone.

The even cooler thing about the T. gondii is that they can infect humans, and change our behaviour too, although it makes us more likely to get into traffic accidents, not madly in love with cats. This got me thinking about how that could be used to explain why zombies are a thing in a game, and that one of the earlier stages of the infection would make people want to hug a zombie or something. Needless to say, I have no idea what the rest of the lecture was on.

 

During my walk home I realised that this was not the first time I had zoned out during a lecture, and they all had a common theme, I was thinking about how something I'd just been told would be cool in a video game, and then I literally stopped walking, full epiphany style, and was like 'Woah, why am not learning how to make games?', so during the next couple of weeks I did some research and decided I would reapply for the CGT course. However, by that point, I was too late to start CGT that year so I resigned myself to finishing my Zoology degree, and good lord fourth year was boring, but I ain't no quitter and I came out with a 2:1, I even got an A for my honours project, which included entertaining activities such as; blending tiny pieces of mice brains, putting purple dye into distilled mice brains and seeing how long it took to go clear, freezing a banana with liquid nitrogen, and not noticing I spilt really concentrated acid on my notes and getting really confused about the big hole that appeared. The main takeaway from that fourth year was that scientific research was not what I wanted to do with my life, thus solidifying my decision to go to Abertay to learn how to make games.

 

Now it may sound like I regret my time at Aberdeen University, but the truth is I don't. I learned so many important skills, like being able to force myself to complete really, really, really boring tasks to the best of my abilities, thinking about a problem scientifically, proving to myself that I can write absurdly long reports, and just generally growing as a person, unfortunately not physically, I never did manage to get as tall as my dad. 

After that, I entered second first year, and I've got to say I would highly recommend going from fourth to first year, I've never been so relaxed in my entire life. So now I'm in fourth year again and, much to my parent's delight, I've not decided to do another degree and I am very glad that I'm I'm doing what I'm doing and will hopefully be doing it for many years to come.