As a girl, I loved James Herriot's tales of being an English country veterinarian. I've known for as long as I can remember that although my mother chose to stay home with her children, she has a bachelor's degree in chemistry. In high school, I enjoyed and did well in my science and math classes. So when I started college at BYU, I decided to be a biochemistry major as a foundation for going to vet school. In my first two years at BYU, my teachers helped me to fall in love with chemistry itself. In the second semester of my sophomore year of college, when I had just completed the first semester of organic chemistry (Chem 2310 at Snow College) at the top of my class, I was given the opportunity to TA for the off-sequence section of first-semester organic chemistry while I was concurrently taking the second semester of organic chemistry (Chem 2320). I enjoyed sharing my knowledge and helping other students so much that I realized that what I really wanted to do when I grew up was teach chemistry at the college level. I changed my major from biochemistry to chemistry. I knew I was going to need a PhD to teach college, so after I finished at BYU, I went to graduate school at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the PhD alma mater of my undergraduate mentor. During graduate school, although I liked the project I was working on, I struggled with research itself -- and I absolutely loved my TA work. That confirmed to me that college teaching was really what I wanted to do with my life. Teaching chemistry at Snow College is literally my dream job! And since University of Wisconsin-Madison's mascot is a badger, being at Snow College makes me doubly a badger, and I think that's pretty awesome, too.
