Did You Know?
A single professor can teach thousands of students over the course of a career, and the ideas and ways of thinking they pass on can ripple outward through those students into medicine, law, policy, art, science, and other corners of public life.
How to Get Started
Getting started on the path to becoming a professor begins with developing a deep relationship with a subject you love and learning to ask questions about it that go beyond what any textbook can answer. The path is long and one of the most intellectually demanding careers available. Still, it rewards people who start early, stay curious, and are never quite satisfied with the explanations they have been given. Every professor began as a student who wanted to know more.
Explore the Basics
Visit your local library and ask a librarian to help you find a book about a subject you already love but want to understand more deeply, then read it looking specifically for questions it raises that it does not fully answer. Write down your three best unanswered questions and talk about them with a parent or caregiver. Learning to notice what you do not yet know is one of the most important habits a future professor can develop.
Try It Out
Pick a simple question you can actually investigate at home, such as which type of paper airplane flies farthest, which surface a marble rolls fastest on, or which food your pet prefers, and run a simple experiment to find out. Try it at least three times, record your results, and draw a conclusion. Running a test, recording what happens, and drawing a conclusion from the results is the basic structure of all research, from elementary school to the most advanced laboratories in the world.
Join the Community
Ask a parent or caregiver to take you to a free public lecture, author talk, or science demonstration at a local university, museum, or library, and come prepared with one question you want to ask or have answered. Many universities host free events open to the public, including science fairs, lectures by visiting scholars, and campus tours. Seeing professors in their element, talking about work they love in front of an audience that came to hear them, gives you a picture of the career that no description can fully capture.