Question: Why did you decide to become an engineer and not a rugby player?

Conor McGinn answered on 10 Mar 2016:

I didn’t really make the decision to be an ‘engineer’ over rugby player per say. Instead I choose to follow my passion in robotics over my passion in rugby. If given the choice between other areas in engineering – then the choice I would have made would have been different. Some of the big reasons why (for me) robotics was the decision I made:
* In sport, rugby in particular, you have a career of maybe 10 years if you do well. At the end of it your body is likely to be damaged in some way. In robotics, I can keep going indefinitely. Over the summer when I was in the US, it met with a robotics pioneer who is in his 80s. He had just finished writing a book. I dont want to dedicate half my life to something and then be forced to stop because my body wont let me do it anymore.
* In sport, I am dependent on weather (light and ground conditions) to play. Also there is an off-season where nobody plays. In robotics, I can pretty much work where, when and how often I like. Yes it costs money and yes I do need machines – but when these are unavailable to me, there are always interesting and important other things to do.
* with sport there is a hard limit you can achieve. you can win a championshi, defend a championship etc. At the beginning of the season a reset button is pressed and we start again. Robotics is progressive. Every single thing that I do helps me with the next. What I can build now will look c*rappy compared with what I will be able to build in 5 years. Just look at mobile phones… This is really exciting in my field where robots are only just starting to find applications in the real world. I can feel that we are so close to something great – and every effort I make is inching me closer to achieving kinds of things that were thought impossible only a few years ago.