When I was a kid, I loved doing puzzles books. I had no idea that what I was doing was math. My mother, though, recognized a talent in me and became determined to nurture it. Education was important to her. She had grown up in a rough part of Cincinnati and had been the first person in her family to go to college. As a single mother, she wanted more opportunities for me. So she encouraged me, buying me workbooks, racing me in Sudoku, and spending countless hours playing games with me, without ever letting on that she was cultivating my reasoning, logic, and mathematical skills. I was a good but indifferent math student in high school. It wasn’t until I got to Penn State that I realized that I had an aptitude for math — and, more important, a strong drive to learn. One of my professors, Vadim Kaloshin, introduced me to mathematical research and mentored me through my first paper. He gave me Arnold’s Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics and patiently answered my questions as I struggled through it. It was extremely difficult, but making my way through that book made me a better mathematician. Doing mathematical research reconnected me to that first love of discovery and problem-solving that I had felt as a kid — the surge of satisfaction and excitement that I felt when I had figured out something on my own and understood it deeply. There is no better feeling.