Big Think

Bonnie Bassler: So I never had an epiphany moment like that. I loved doing puzzles and games and putting together and reading mystery books and trying to figure out the answer, and I was actually pretty aimless in college, you know, like just kinda liked biology, and there was no, it was not like I was three, and I-- so I was sort of in college, late in college, and doing these classes and kind of sort of generically liking everything, and then I thought, I am going to try working in a lab, and I just showed up on Professor Troy, who was my professor’s name, on his doorstep, he is kind of like the ASPCA of lost kids there. He took me in, I did not even know how to pipette, nothing. I had never been in a lab other than like a class or something in high school. And the second they let me in there and I saw you just played at things and puzzles and all these things in your brain, you could not get me out of there, and I never looked back. And maybe I was supposed to be something else, I don’t know, but I just loved it. So it was the moment-- I mean, if I had an epiphany, it was like I don’t ever want to leave this lab, and so that is why I went to graduate school, I did not want to get a job, right, and that is why I did a post-doc. I didn’t want to get a job and that’s why I went to Princeton, because I could just, in some legitimate way, do this for the rest of my life, because it is really fun.

Recorded on: 6/17/08