I spent the first 12 years of my life living onboard a boat with my family, and then on and off throughout my teenage years. My father wanted to give us kids an environment conducive to learning, so I grew up surrounded by his Shaums Outlines, IC pinout reference manuals (thankfully the Internet age has replaced those), dos and qbasic books, etc. and lots of old computers running windows and dos. While I don't think he ever excelled at these subjects, they were his hobby and he was always trying to get us interested in them, too. I remember after some of us kids displayed an interest in tearing out the cardboard subscription forms from his vast collection of Scientific American, he actively encouraged us to do so in the hope that the articles would catch our eye and we might also develop an interest in science at a young age. My siblings and I were rushed through the high school curriculum in a home schooled environment and at around the age of 13 started taking some long distance first-year math courses from universities (Monash University, Australia). I, being the youngest, waded heavily through after my siblings, but never was particularly interested. The temptation to move to a normal home, go to a normal school and have friends was growing, so at the age of 13 I enrolled in ninth-grade at a public school. In the whole time I was at school I never had an interest in maths or science and the library was definitely a no-go zone for me (trying to fit in was a full time job). I applied for uni with a score of 16 out of 25 (1 best and 25 worst). I scraped into environmental engineering with a vague idea of changing to electronics or it (which my score hadn't let me directly into, but it was possible to change engineering majors once in). Uni seemed boring until about 3rd year of electronics and computer engineering. Ever since then I have begun developing a steadily growing interest in programming, science and maths, although I'm not good at the latter two. I'm now two years out of uni, working as an iOS developer. I hope that as my interest grows my learning keeps up. I think my father gave me the spark, but now it's up to me to keep nurturing the interest to get its full enjoyment.