In the summer of 1997, I was a premed student at NYU with a secret: I was way more interested in computers than cadavers. So when I landed a research internship at NASA's biology labs at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, I told myself it was the perfect compromise. Computers AND biology. Science AND technology. Mom would be proud.

I was twenty years old, riding a Greyhound-style bus from the intern housing to the Space Center every morning, wearing my NASA badge like it was a backstage pass to the future. Which, in a way, it was. I just didn't know it yet.

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