Sitting on the couch as a malleable ten year old, it was a typical Friday night with my family. I had gotten back from dance class, eaten my mom’s spaghetti, and we were in the middle of a riveting movie. You might have heard of it. Apollo 13. The NASA Flight Director, a calm and collected Gene Kranz, leads his mission control team through a dramatic turn of events. A ruptured and exploded oxygen fuel tank left the crew and spacecraft of Apollo 13 without hopes of reaching the moon. Their new goal: get these men home safely. And these words were famously voiced “Failure is not an option”. Transfixed, I ate my ice cream, and continued on the journey of this wonderful movie, unaware of how internalized this phrase would become.

Failure is not an option.

I’ve really taken this to heart. And have explained my mantra at any given opportunity. So let me explain it here as well. Because we all fail. I’ve failed. You can’t get through a PhD program without failure. In fact, my first thesis project failed massively through no fault of my own or my boss’s. The science just didn’t work. But failure to move on…that is not an option. Failure to grow is not an option. Failure to try is not an option. So try we must, fail we might, but succeed we can.

So that leads me to how I’ve dealt with success. As this website suggests, there are a few facets of my life that have real importance: Education, Science, Dance, Piano, and Life itself. Some of these seemingly arbitrarily came into my life. My mom put me in dance and piano lesson when I was five. For some unpredictable reason, they stuck. I found and continue to find joy in dance and piano; and though I wanted to quit piano as an angsty teen and didn’t want to drag myself to a dance class as an exhausted graduate student, I knew that I would be devastated if I let these skills go. They’re a part of who I am. So is education. I’ve always loved learning. I was that kid watching NOVA (again, with the space theme). My parents saw this passion in me and decided to foster my education. I went to an amazing high school (I loved high school!), I went to a fantastic college (I loved college!). They weren’t surprised when I wanted to continue my education and pursue my PhD in the biosciences. I wanted to become a professor, share my love of learning, and teach the next generation. And here we are today: I still dance, I still play the piano, and I teach bright students what we know about the world of biology. So those are the biggies! That’s me! But failure to recognize the little things…is not an option. And that’s where the Life page comes in. Here, you can snoop through my cooking, wine, travel, and photography adventures with the ones that I love.

Feel free to contact me!