Early Examinations - Handmade Collage

Many students are surprised to learn that I knew I wanted to be a scientist at the age of four. Then again they never knew my mentor, Dr. Hopper. The good doctor lived in a hole in our backyard. Blessed with an insatiable curiosity, he found my rolling around on the grass captivating. He sat in the shade of a head of kale for hours before working up the nerve to approach me. "I say," he said, "What is it that you are doing?" I stopped rolling and looked at the black and white rabbit resting just inches from me. "Playing," I replied. "Fascinating," he replied. "Would you care to see a colony of slugs just right over here?" he asked. "Yes!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. In the days and years that followed, Dr. Hopper introduced me to the wonders of nature right in my own backyard. Soon enough we ventured into my house where he found all of the things that I took for granted full of wonder. His constant and insistent inquisitiveness soon enough infected me. Hardly a day passed when I wouldn't race out to the garden to share with him some discovery. Together, through the years of my youth we examined the entire neighborhood, sorting and categorizing every new piece of flora and fauna. It was only natural that when I went off to college I should become a man of science. As for Dr. Hopper, he devoted his later years to publishing his findings in journals as esteemed and diverse as Nature and Rabbit Fancier.