Although I grew up in Houston, I consider Torreon, N.M., in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, home. I spent much of my childhood in that remote rural area, playing on —and learning from — the land. It’s why I want to become a principal investigator and start my own microbiology lab on the Navajo Reservation: I want to take care of the land. After a nontraditional academic journey, I’m now a graduate student at Harvard University studying bacterial genetics, and I finally feel like I know where I’m going.