I was at Penn State from 1991–1995, and by and large the professors I had were male. Not long before I arrived, Dr. Jenni Evans came in, and she was my Dynamics II instructor. I tried to tell myself it doesn’t matter that she’s female, and I’m female, but in reality it does—it puts a signal in my brain, “Look where she is. She’s a Ph.D., she’s teaching wave dynamics. If she can do it so can I.” That was a subliminal trigger in my head, it kept me inspired.