What got you into science?
This is something I ask myself to remind me of how far I’ve come in this field and how much I love it. Science has been the subject I looked forward to in school for as long as I can remember. It fueled my curiosity and widened my view of the world around us.
Childhood
As a kid, it was space that first got me into science. Knowing that there are planets out there in the starry sky, lightyears away from us; that these planets are far larger than Earth and are so different from our home planet. It was absolutely fascinating! I remember having a solar system placemat that I loved to use at the dinner table (I’m pretty sure we got it from Walmart). A couple of years later, I would get a book as well as a puzzle about our solar system from those Scholastics Book Orders at school. I enjoyed reading this little solar system book, I probably read it multiple times as a kid.
There was a moment in grade 6 that I’ll never forget. A woman had come in to talk about space (we were on the topic of space for science), and she was asking questions about the planets and space in general to see what our class already knew about the topic. Needless to say I knew all of the answers, but I was too shy to raise up my hand and say them. Then she asked “What is the big-red dot on Jupiter?”, no one knew the answer to this question, even the smartest people in my class didn’t know. I, very timidly, raised up my hand to answer the question saying “It’s a storm”. I was so proud of myself that I knew the answer.
I have to mention some very important people in media who have really formed science in such a positive light for me:
- Zoboomafoo as this showed my how amazing the animal kingdom is
- Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel since it showed all the new and cool technology and science discoveries
- and (of course) Bill Nye the Science Guy who is such an amazing science communicator and made science fun to learn!
High School & University
During my time in high school, I fell in love with chemistry and biology (specifically microbiology and molecular biology). The teachers that I had for those subjects were all such wonderful people who clearly loved what they were teaching. Some of them (specifically my grade 11 and 12 chemistry and biology teachers), inspired my even more to go into science. This eventually led my to studying biochemistry at the University of Waterloo (which I then switched to just General Science). My time during my undergrad opened up new topics that I had never heard about before such as bioinformatics and biotechnology. My curiosity and drive to learn more about the tiny aspects of our lives grew more and more as my studies went on.
In elementary school, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. For a while, I was determined to be an astronomer; to study the stars and galaxies. It’s fun to look back at that time because of how I changed my focus of study; from studying the large galaxies above us to studying the tiny galaxies within us. Here I am now as a medical lab assistant/technician. Not where I imagined myself being, but still happy to be in the sciences and working in the lab.
I don’t think I can ever hate science. Of course there will always be topics of debate and controversy within the field, but overall there’s still so much to love and learn about in science. It continues to fuel my curiosity about the world around us and within us.
Noemi’s Corner 