Greatest movie, book, author, and astronomer of all time. Contact by Carl Sagan. My dad and I watched that movie together a lot growing up. On top of that, Dad always had a telescope of some kind. We would look at planets, stars, the moon, whatever was out. If I’m being honest, Dad was the big nerd that made me the nerd I am. But really, these two things are what sparked my interest in those little points of light in the night sky. I idolized Ellie Arroway (main character in Contact) growing up. I wanted to be smart! I wanted to be that girl that had a book for every occasion: a “bus” book, a “lunch break” book, a “theater class” book, you know, like Rory Gilmore. I loved Rory Gilmore in Girlmore Girls, too. It’s a TV series following a girl beginning in high school named Rory. Rory is such a strong, smart girl driven to go to Harvard and her mother is very eccentric and quirky. I loved it. I wanted to be like that. And yes, I am embarrassed to say that I got all my inspo from TV and movies. But hey, I could spin this around to say something like: See? Even I didn’t know reality yet. It’s not like I was solving equations since I could talk or anything.  In fact, math and science turned out to be a pretty big struggle for me in elementary school and that persisted into high school.