What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics? I grew up with a love of science. From my mother burying chicken bones in my sandbox to inspire my play as a paleontologist to my grandfather purchasing a telescope so we could look at the Moon in his backyard, my ambition was to become a scientist. I began college on an aerospace engineering path, but along the way I switched majors to Spanish education. I spent six years as a high school Spanish teacher, but during that time I followed the physics and astronomy world through documentaries, news articles, and books. I missed engaging with mathematics and science, and I eventually decided it was time to go back to school to become an astrophysicist. It was in this time that NASA’s Juno spacecraft was transmitting high quality photographs of Jupiter, and the ground-based LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, was detecting black hole mergers. I was wrapping up my second undergraduate degree when news broke of the simultaneous detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from the neutron star merger GW170817. I was fascinated by the papers published on this event, and it cemented my desire to become a high-energy astrophysicist.
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