As a youngster my room was always a science lab, especially chemistry. My wife complains now about constant ink stains on my clothes, but my mother complained about acid holes and nitric acid stains.
Somebody gave me a "chemistry set" early on, and I collected "samples" from kitchen, medicine cabinet, and "nature". There were few restrictions in those days and my "best friend" Paul Harris (no family relation) was the son of a pharmacist who also owned the local "Rexall" drugstore, and I had a full supply of acids and other (now properly highly restricted) chemicals. My mother was a registered nurse and able to help on occasion with understanding what I was doing. Paul actually ended up badly, sadly, losing an eye and later his life.
I had looked forward to studying chemistry in high school. However the very experiences and probably very good teacher resigned the year before I took the course, and the new teacher, although very caring, did not draw my attention to the field as a future way of life. She was also rather naive. When she passed around a container of Mercury so we all could sense it's properties, and I stole(sadly) some to take hom for my lab by pouring it in my shirt pocket, upong bending over outside in the hall I learned why it is called "quicksilver"!.
As a freshman at Rice Institute (now Rice University) my favorite professor by far was Jurg Waser an exciting lecturer who had worked with Linus Pauling, and in fact left Rice the next year to teach at Cal Tech.
My second year I had a wonderful M.S. student Mr. Shewell and became disgusted with Rice when, as I enjoyed hearing him talk about his research,,` some "student" would ask him to "confine himself to the syllabus". Rice students iat that time were highly grade-oriented havibg mostly (I was an exception) been valedictorian or something from their high school class and were part of the reason I left Rice (in good standing) after my second year.
We did have an impromptu lecture by Niels Bohr who was visiting Houston and our President William Vermilion Houston ("How"ston, not "Hugh"ston, I had previously been personally told. Bohr was not known for giving inspiring lectures!