Who am I? That seems to be the question that everyone spends most of their life trying figure out about themselves. I’m only a Junior in college, for gods sake. I am possibly the farthest away from fully knowing who I am. But, I can say I know about myself. I’m one of those people who is quiet until you know me; that’s when I start to show my true colors. Nerdy may be the best description for my personality and the references I make that tend to make myself laugh more than the people around me. The joys of life are innumerable and my perspective on life is, “it’s fantastic!!” At face value, I may come off as a cold and blunt person, but I can be extremely caring when it’s needed. I hold my relationships between me my friends and my family to be of the utmost importance and would never do anything to jeopardize those bonds. I am currently going to Iowa State University double majoring in Microbiology and Genetics, and as I said, I am a Junior. I’ve tossed around ideas of career paths like industry with pharmaceuticals, diagnostics or immunology (medical microbiology quickly shot that down…) and finally academic research. The only path that seemed to stick out as a viable option was academic research. I figured this out through my love of being a teaching assistant in the classroom and later through hands on research. Just saying I want to be in academic research is quite the broad statement. More specifically, I am extremely interested in the aspects of human and cellular aging. Which makes for a great segue!!! Because that is what this blog will be based around. I plan to look into different paths of promising anti-aging research along with their mechanisms, viability, and approaches researchers are taking.