During most of childhood, my go-to answer for “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was marine biologist. It’s a relatively common nerd-child response (or was). Sharks. You know. But briefly, maybe just for a year or more, my answer changed to herpetologist. I loved reptiles, and it seemed a lovely alternative to spending all my time in boats (that’s how I imagined the life of a marine biologist). This was before I discovered my utter uselessness at doing real scientific work. High school biology dissections? No. High school biology anything? Nope. Even grasping basic Mendelian … [Read more...]