My mom has a teaching degree but chose to stay home with me and my sister. My dad is an electrical engineer and worked at Sandia National Laboratories, a contractor for the United States Department of Energy. Sandia has programs in international, homeland and nuclear security. They also conduct research and develop technologies for risk and threat analysis, for nuclear materials monitoring and detection, and for incident response and recovery.
Sandia labs is located on Kirkland Air Force Base and while I was allowed to go onto the base with my parents, I wasn't able to go see where he worked because the area was classified and only those with a security clearance were allowed in. A few times they had an open house called Family Day and we were allowed in. Eventually they stopped having them, likely because it was a lot of work and expense.
So I grew up not really knowing what my dad did until I was older. He traveled a lot (nearly 40 trips to Russia) and I thought that was neat. He also used to bring home books for me. First, The Bobbsey Twins mysteries, then later Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which started a lifelong love of mysteries.
When I was in a senior in high school, I took an Intro to Engineering course at UNM where we learned about different types of engineering majors. I came away deciding that I didn't really want to be an engineer, but I loved biology and chemistry. Even though I didn't end up with the same career as my dad, I did end up a scientist so I think that his career did have some influence on mine.
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