A lot of people get into ecology because their parents took them on camping trips, or they grew up in the woods, or they spent all their time outdoors.  I didn't do any of those things.  I grew up in a mill town in Northern Rhode Island, surrounded by superfund sites.  We couldn't play in the nearby river because it had been polluted by 100 years of textile dying. 

Sophomore year of college was the first time I'd set foot inside a forest.  But I'd already discovered a love for biology through books and nature documentaries.  It was all the crazy stories of life: electric eels, bacteria at the bottom of the sea, dinosaurs, that first got me hooked. 

Over time I came to appreciate the smaller crazy things about life: blades of grass, feathers on birds.  Realizing that nature is all around, not just in far-away forests, sparked my interest in introduced ("invasive") species. 

I wavered back and forth in college between wanting to be a doctor, physicist, newspaper journalist, poet, geologist, and Hispanic studies scholar.  It took me until my senior year to decide on ecology. 

The path to choosing a career in science does not have to be linear-- I found that a lot of the things I did along the way, such as writing for the college newspaper and taking classes in medieval magic, only helped to uncover my underlying passion for science. 

Now a graduate student at Cornell, I study the growth strategies and ecological impact of introduced plants.  My advice is to keep an open mind, and to explore the topics that you find most interesting.