Joe's trip to becoming a biologist was a long adventure. Junior year at Columbia was a watershed. Joe had moved into a single room in the Columbia dorms. Having approached Francis J. Ryan to ask him for some help in getting some workspace, Joe was given an old storeroom in the Zoology Building and he established his first professional lab there.

After Columbia Joe went to Case-Western Reserve University for four years to get his PhD and then two years as a Postdoctoral working in the lab of Gerry Wyatt at Yale University. Through all this Joe's family was not entirely supportive often asking when he would get a "real job", as if I were playing arround those six years. On the one hand I wanted to say how much I enjoyed what I was doing. On the other hand I wanted some recognition for doing things that were difficult and not just playing around. {This theme needs to be developed further.}