Introduction

This chapter introduces the roles of a scientist and the significance of thoughtfully preparing for those roles. The section also discusses the authors’ inspiration for writing this book and some of their core guiding values. Principal is our philosophy of paying it forward – passing on the many things one learns from various mentors and teachers or from personal experience to the next generation. Integral to competency in the field is also a healthy amount of curiosity and skepticism. It is important to always seek out diverse perspectives and advice, to continue learning and teaching oneself, and to study and learn from doing or seeing things done wrong. Herein the authors present a compilation of insights that they wish they knew earlier.