Physics was really hard for me in high school, and I loved that challenge. I had a high school physics teacher who was a woman with a Physics PhD. She encouraged me to go to college, exposed me to the possibility of doing a science PhD, and never made me feel like my gender would be a barrier in doing so. As a first-gen student who knew no female scientists, I was hugely inspired by her. I'd also always loved space, like many people, but didn't think it was a possible career path until I took my first astrophysics course in college and was told I could do research in the field and someday be a professor of astrophysics. I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, where everyone around me was a computer engineer, so it wasn't too much of a stretch to do something computational. Still, it was important to me to pursue fundamental knowledge and go down a research-oriented, rather than technological/industry, path.