Written in the stars.

Ifirst really saw the stars when I was 10 years old and on my first camping trip, in Ontario. I remember awakening late one night, stepping outside the tent, and looking up. I was completely stunned by what I saw. Stars—millions of them it seemed—filled the entire sky. I had never imagined that there was such a vast expanse beyond Earth. Some critical aspects of my childhood clearly contributed to my later success as an astrobiologist. My father taught me how to think big and how to succeed. He introduced me to many outlandish ideas at a very early age, which helped me learn to take seemingly crazy ideas seriously, even my own. Perhaps unintentionally, my parents’ unorthodox childraising methods also gave me an independent streak and a natural skepticism of authority, traits that led me to challenge ideas I didn’t understand or agree with. I wasn’t a conventionally good student (I had trouble learning in a classroom setting), but going to school was actually productive, as the many hours I spent daydreaming there laid down the pathways I now random-walk as I conceive and evaluate new ideas. When, at age 16, I learned one could pursue astronomy as a profession, my guide star was set. I rushed home to tell my father, who immediately harshly lectured that in his view my only option was to seek a career where I could actually get a job and support myself. But it was too late; the independence he taught me had backfired—on him!