I Want To Be A Scientist (Rachel at Age 9)

This is an audio recording by Rachel Fryer recorded in September 2012, when she was 9 years old. This is the earliest recording I know of when Rachel mentions the possibility of attending the US Air Force Academy, where she is now a junior and an astronautical engineering major.

I originally recorded this with Audioboo, that changed into Audioboom, and I thought all those recordings were offline! Today (3 Jan 2026) I discovered EMBEDDED versions of my AudioBoo recordings are still accessible, via this blog post from September 2012.

Today I screenrecorded this audio and added the original image, which was taken in summer 2012 at the Discovery Educators Network Summer Institute in Bozeman, Montana. I shared the closing keynote at the conference, and Rachel helped me, I think sharing about an animation coding project she created in Scratch.

Rachel and I were able to explore Yellowstone Park together as part of our trip. What a special and magical time that was!

If you read that original family learning blog post from September 2012, you can tell Shelly and I were definitely sharing our love for both science and space education with Rachel at a young age! Who can tell where our dreams and adventures together can take us?! “To infinity and beyond!”