I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
The hardest part of it was really being away from my family - I have two small children. Last year I took over 20 business trips, so being away from them was hard.

