I have wanted to be a scientist before I even knew what science was. I the perverbial annoying child who always asked "why?" though I never did it to be annoying, I did it because I genuinely wanted to know the why behind almost anything I came across. My mother always tells me a story of when I was maybe 2 years old in the car and she says to me "Oh honey, look at the pretty bird outside" and I respond to her in a robotic voice "Mom. Look at the pretty air conditioner unit". Apparently I had a fascination with vents as a child.
When I got a bit older I became fascinated with weather. It was this huge grand thing that effected so much around us. When cartoons weren't on, I'd watch the weather channel for hours at a time. If I even heard the slightest rumble of thunder, I'd instantly turn on the weather channel waiting for the severe thunderstorm warning red ticker to appear at the bottom of the screen with it's trademark low-fi beep. Commence much jumping on the couch, running outside, and praying that I'd see a tornado. I was so into storms that my dad bought me educational/informative videos on tornados (my favorite weather thing). I digested it like know ones business, and I wanted to become a storm chaser. It was a sign that I would be a blue-collar scientist who wanted to be hands on with dangerous things. I had tornado posters in my room, and I even made a tornado model using dry ice and a fan box that was the talk of the school when I handed it in as a science project. To this day I am extremely fond of weather, and if for some reason I end up living in the midwest I'd become an amature storm chaser as a hobby.
As I got a bit older I was still too young to really dig into the nitty-gritty of weather, and while I still loved it, I became fascinated with rocks and minerals. It started with looking at my mothers and grandmother jewelry. I loved all the pretty colors, how simplistic yet complex they were at the same time, and I wanted to understand more about them. I had a rock and mineral collection. My grandmother would take me to this place called edmund scientific that had all kinds of minerals and stuff. I got books on it, but eventually I did get a bit bored with it around 10 years old or so. That's when I asked a very fated question one day: "...what are these MADE out of?"
Enter chemistry. I started to read about what elements were. I realized that they were the fundemental building blocks of everything. Atoms, elections, protons, they created such wonderfully complex things from such simple building blocks. It was enchanting to me. I got all kinds of books on the periodic table. If I went to the library I would dig up all the chemistry books and try and understand them. At that age I wasn't so much interested in the math of it, but the principles, concepts, and facts. By age 11 I had memorized nearly the entire periodic table and I couldn't get enough. I begged for chemistry sets, and my father got me one, but my mother refused (parents are divorced). She was afraid I'd blow something up or start a fire, which is entirely unfounded. Around 12 or so I began disceting fireworks in the backyard (my former step dad had a ton) once I realized it was all chemistry, and I wanted to play around with it. My poor mother had a fit when she found out and locked them in the shed, but I found a way back in.
I knew I wanted to be a chemist very early into discovering chemistry. At that age, to me it was not just learning, but also play. Yet, also scary, and therefore thrilling. When I would read about the elements, one of the first things I'd read about was "what would happen if I ate these". I was not just fascinated what they did to each other, but what they did to us, and how some of them would have no effect or be good for us, and others would be downright deadly. I'd read stories of people being injected with plutonium and be terrified, but also entranced by it. This was the early signs that I'd go into chemistry.
I was ESTATIC when we learned chemistry formally in school, but also frustrated. I knew almost all of it (sans the math) already, and it wasn't until I got to high school that I started to get to a point of learning new things. It took some fighting on my end due to poor performance in elementry school that had downstream effects in middle school and early high school, but I managed to get into honor chemistry my sophmore year. I was a bit frustrated at first because the math was rather dull (I was good at math, but I didn't enjoy doing it). When we got to concepts though: periodic trends, non-math patterns, etc. I REALLY loved it. It fit my brain nicely and I did super well with it. I got to go in science leauge trips. I remember asking my teacher to let me try demo/experiments after school, but she wouldn't let me. Though she "loved my enthusiasm". That year I took 2 math courses to get ahead a year so I could take AP chemistry as a junior. I did just that, and after a slightly bumpy start, I rose to the top of that class, and was the only one to get a 5 on the AP exam. I decided near the end of my Junior year that I wanted to get a PhD in organic chemistry. I completely aced the organic unit and it felt so easy to me. I was shocked to learn people struggled with it. My teacher identified me as a prodigy of science, and to this day I still talk to her every now and again. She also helped address a number of self-esteem issues I had. I was never the perfect or top student, but I knew far more than them due to long term memory retention, and I had so much passion. I didn't want to learn to do well, I wanted to learn because it was fascinting. I took 7 science courses in high school, and did an independent study in organic chemistry my senior year. I won the award for the most outstanding senior in science as well. Why? Because I was always tinkering. I stayed after school to run experiments to learn more. I just wanted to know.
It always came back to the itch I had as a kid: I had to know why.
Once I got to college I began to taking my courses, and that's where things got bumpy. I got to course I had to work at. They were a struggle. Within chemistry, pchem was the worst, and for a while it made me hate chemistry. It was so hard, and it actually made me not care. Which was somewhat jarring. Nevertheless, my long term plan was to get a PhD, and I wasn't going to let pchem get in the way of that. I focused on what I was good at: organic chemistry. I did research for 3 years in undergrad, and that was finally, after years and year from just a kid of longing to play with chemicals, I FINALLY got to. It also proved to be hard. Harder than I expected, but I knew it's what I wanted to. I kept going.
In comes grad school... it somewhat killed my love of science. Why? Because I have learned research is fucking hard. It's unforgiving, exacting, and requires so much dedication in the wake of so much uncertainty and failure. I realized that while I love science, I love learning, I am just not passionate about discovery. The latter is just too much of a slog for me to handle emotionally. It saddened me to realized this 3 years ago, but I still love science. I will never leave it. My career is going to take me into communcating science to the world. I plan to apply for jobs in the american chemical society. If there is one thing I have above most else, is I have a deep passion for science. It is something near and dear to my heart, and I want to pass that on to the world, and lend to young children, teenagers, and adults to feel the spark I have felt since I was little, and help us come together and make the world a better place.
I'd write more but I have to run, besides I am a wind bag and this is long enough!