Laura sat at her desk. She had been there for hours patiently waiting as her tired eyes repetitiously skimmed over countless notes and stacks of elaborate research manuscripts. The vast collection of detailed material she hoped would define her career lay haphazardly spread before her like an overly complex jigsaw puzzle and reflected a personal pursuit of epic proportion. As a whole, the mountainous piles of categorized papers, thick textbooks, numerically labeled folders, and color-coded binders represented the body of knowledge she had been diligently accumulating for the past two years. What an ordinary person might easily observe and dismiss as "just another messy desk," Laura identified as her future. Between turning pages in her heavily worn logbooks, examining crucial research from like-minded colleagues, and scribbling excessive amounts of esoteric notes in the pages and margins of her own journal, her strained, bloodshot eyes occasionally glanced up from behind thick, purple-framed glasses to check the screen of her workstation. With a sigh that signaled her looming worry, Laura apprehensively returned to her notes.

Utilizing her company's proprietary software, the high-end workstation was busy running a complex series of tests based on Laura's custom code, which had been painstakingly programmed by hand. The elaborate setup was on the verge of completing a simulation that calculated the cohesion of molecular bonds in an effort to create a synthetic protein substrate. The results would be displayed pending the progress bar's completion which sat idly frozen at ninety-nine percent. Waiting for it to finish, the brightly colored bar appeared endless. Sometimes, Laura would humbly stare, almost hypnotized, at the mouse pointer, which, during the process, would convert to an hourglass and tumble over and over. The majority of the calculations were prone to lasting several hours while others could consume an entire workday. She waited intently for the final one percent.

The disappointing truth surrounding her success was disheartening — all had failed except for one. Despite several months of nonstop diligence and a pile of frustrating results, Laura held onto the hope that eventually she would duplicate that single instance of success. Since that first monumental achievement, she had attempted dozens of tries but to no avail. The reason she clung to her research with such tenacious zeal was that this was her final project for graduation. The success of her dissertation would grant her the title of doctor in a narrow, specialized field of study. She would soon become a full-fledged pharmaceutical engineer.

For Laura, this achievement would amount to a pleasing level of success as it would represent the pinnacle of her life's ambition through the culmination of years of study, hard work, patience, and carefully guided application. Looking back, she realized she had spent almost half her life within the educational system of higher learning and now, at almost thirty, with her training nearing completion and after her bachelor's and master's degrees, Laura would finally obtain her doctorate.

Her project was technically finished and with all the mandatory labor complete, her internship was steadily coming to a close. After developing a unique theory, supporting it by presenting various data points and providing one successful test result, the final polished paper could have easily made the printing presses of any medical journal. If she were honest with herself, she would have realized that her masterpiece was more than enough to satisfy her dissertation committee. The prestigious work demonstrated both her ingenious application of knowledge as well as her unwavering commitment to an idea, but the final product was not nearly enough to satisfy her. The time she spent exploring and perfecting her skill set and the achievement of her degrees, including her doctorate, were all steps of a long and arduous journey. She had been inspired at a young age and decided early on to embark upon a quest to make the world a better place and with her three degrees nearly in order, she was well on her way. Her aspirations were so lofty that, at times, she was seldom taken seriously and on more than one occasion, had been dismissed by jealous, shortsighted colleagues. With an ambitious nature that never faltered and a commitment fueled by her passion and good nature, she continued to strive ever forward.

At one point, Laura considered becoming a medical doctor. The idea of administering aid to people on a personal level appealed to the purest part of her humanity. The experience of seeing small children smile after easing the pain and assuring their parents that everything would be "all right," would have been incredibly fulfilling in the sense that it would have brought the reward and satisfaction she yearned for. There had been two perceivable problems with that career choice though. First, Laura dreaded the aspect of being a people person as she always felt inadequate with herself. Second, the main issue concerning that particular path was that it would not place her in a position where she felt she could do enough.

During the course of her training, Laura actually ended up marrying a doctor. Kurt was a family physician and when she watched him work, she longed to experience the gratitude and satisfaction he received. When it came to helping the sick, healing the injured, and catching ailments before they became terminal, Kurt was her inspiration. His caring nature allowed him to ease the suffering; provide help, support, and comfort; and ultimately distribute hope. His unbiased care toward those he helped left Laura awestruck time and again but it was his charismatic personality that won her heart. Kurt was indeed a wonderful doctor and everything Laura aspired to be. It was for all those reasons and his pure, good-hearted traits that she married him. In Laura's mind, Kurt was performing miracles on a day-to-day basis and she wanted very much to do the same, but the difference between them was that she wished to do more than help the individual person. With a desire to help the world, she quickly adopted the mentality of Why be a doctor and cure the sick when I can prevent sickness to begin with? She knew what she needed to be; it was simply a matter of getting there.

The path to become a pharmaceutical engineer started with her bachelor's degree in clinical pharmacology where she studied controlled substances and their uses. Though it was not an easy first step, it was one in the appropriate direction. It would have been easy for her to become a pharmacist and fill prescriptions as the financial success would have been satisfying. It was at this time in her life that friends and family — even Kurt — would jokingly call her a "drug dealer." Laura could easily picture herself in a white lab coat, behind a counter, mindlessly distributing prescriptions to the masses. The stereotypical icon of a nerdy woman trapped behind a window bugged her to a degree she could not tolerate. This negative mental image and the challenge to become "more," as well as the need to find her true calling, edged her forward.

Laura's next step was her master's in pharmacology as an analytical chemist, but at the master's level, it would be just that — analyzing data. What Laura truly wanted was application — the power to create. After a world of math that spawned nightmares about endless equations and confounding chemistry that threatened...