I started college as an industrial engineering major. After a year I switched to chemistry before switching again during my senior year, this time to study ceramic engineering and materials science. During that final year I decided I wanted to go to grad school, but in chemistry, not materials science. Since I also wanted to avoid physics to the fullest extent possible I enrolled at the University of Rochester where the chemistry program doesn’t have particularly close ties to physics.  Now as a graduate student I do materials science under the direction of Todd Krauss (trained as a physicist). Specifically I’m working on electron and proton transport through membranes made of aligned carbon nanotube arrays. As a sideline I’m collaborating with some more physicists to probe the structure of water absorbed into carbon nanotubes at low temperature using synchrotron radiation. Even though my best laid plans went awry I really enjoy grad school and my research.  By way of outreach I volunteer with our local science museum through a program called Portal to the Public. Members of the program collaborate with museum staff to develop activities and demonstrations that put the public in contact with working scientists and, equally importantly, get scientists out of the sometimes cloistered academic environment and into the general population.