To get started, I would love to know how you grew up, where kind of you're from, and that process of learning about the Academy and getting to the Academy.

Sure, Nicole.

I was born in 1960 in Ellicott City, Maryland.

I was the oldest of four children, three younger brothers, but we were all... three years and 10 months apart, as my mother's fond of saying.

So I had a lot of boys around me all the time.

I was a tomboy.

My parents expected the same thing of me as they did of my brothers.

And so there was