Don't give up yet! I studied linguistics in undergrad; learned to program in order to build websites; spent several years as a software engineer; and then decid

Don't give up yet! I studied linguistics in undergrad; learned to program in order to build websites; spent several years as a software engineer; and then decided I could only complain for so long that no one had cured type 1 diabetes (which I, like Scott Hanselman, suffer from) before putting my best foot forward. I am now getting my PhD in Bioinformatics, knee-deep in immune cells after not having taken a real bio class since middle school. For all of the people in this thread or reading this thread who wish more people would address "big problems"-- I totally agree. So get in there! The problems of biology are indeed fantastically hard to solve, but that's part of what makes them worthwhile. And don't worry-- the natural world is so vast and ill-understood that biologists are very patient as long as you are trying to learn; the good ones recognize that there may be an infinity of things you don't understand, but the things they don't understand sum to infinity minus one, so we're all in the same boat. Cheers, and hope this discussion encourages a few people to pursue the biggest problems they can!