Dante Loretta

There's my mom.

The one thing I have to say about this picture that I'll never forget this morning because my mom showed up for the graduation ceremony and we're getting ready to go.

And I didn't know how to wear a necktie at the time, so I had to have help tying that around.

And then she's like, where's your cap and gown?

And I went and I grabbed it, and the gown was still in the package from the bookstore.

And she's like, you didn't iron it?

And I was like, what?

She's like, it's going to be all wrinkled.

And sure enough, when I look at this photo, all I see now are the wrinkles in the gown because I didn't iron it.

I didn't even think about ironing my gown before the graduation ceremony.

So we ran out the door because we were running late, as usual.

And then we took this picture, which is very prophetic, because right here, I had no idea what I was going to do.

I decided I wanted to study planetary science.

And in fact, I was going to go to Washington University to work on that spacecraft called Mars Observer, which was ultimately lost in space.

But right there is an iron meteorite.

And sure enough, that would come to define my future career.

I really became interested in meteorites and the study of the origin of our solar system.

And this rock is four and a half billion years old, and it dates from the dawn of our planetary system.

So that combination of studies really opened up a lot of amazing opportunities.

So I mentioned I didn't know what I wanted to do.