Get Career Fit, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 3 Explore

What are your options?

‘The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.’

Plato

In 1984 Dr Barry Marshall, a physician from Perth, Australia, drank a cocktail of bacteria to prove a point. Before his research project, carried out with pathologist Robin Warren, conventional thinking was that peptic ulcers were caused by stress and poor eating habits, so treatment advice was limited to taking antacids and modifying one’s lifestyle. As Dr Marshall put it, ‘To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat.’¹⁷

Within only a few days of drinking the Helicobacter pylori bug, Marshall began getting symptoms, and it wasn’t long before a biopsy showed the bacteria had colonised his stomach. In a nutshell, he had proved to the scientific community, and indeed the world, that it was this type of bacteria, not lifestyle or food choice, that caused peptic ulcers.

At the time, Marshall and Warren were working with lots of unknowns and against what everyone else thought. They pushed boundaries, unfazed that their peers thought their research was a complete waste of time. The result? In 2005 the pair were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, one of the highest awards to which a scientist can aspire. It put their careers firmly on the world map.

Getting and staying career fit takes guts and determination. You have to be willing to explore new career ideas, challenge the norm, experiment with what’s possible ...