Question: When did you realize you wanted to be a scientist?

Melissa Hess answered on 18 Feb 2022:

My senior year of high school. I really wanted to be a novelist, to be honest. My parents were supportive of that, but realistic. They pointed out I could write on my own time, but I needed something that made money, and the writing opportunities that paid weren’t that interesting to me. I started getting interested in my science classes, and then my dad passed from cancer. That kind of tipped me over the edge to science (I wanted to cure cancer), and I thought about minoring in English instead. (Turns out I didn’t like college-level English classes much, and really enjoyed my science classes.)