I am a retired electronics electronics engineer by occupation, and have enjoyed the study of nature as an avocation for most of my lifetime. As a child in rural New York, herps, edible fruits and various oddities were the thing.
During college years in Michigan, I got into edible wild foods, and soon after as an act of self-preservation, did a deep library search of poisonous plants. As a side effect, I met a professor of botany who invited me to audit his field botany course. Around then, I also discovered herbaria and dichotomous identifications keys (not easy to use back then) that enabled an enthusiastic, if unstructured, foray into field botany.
As a working adult, I continued with botany, and delved into fungi, leeches, birds and herptiles to various degrees. My biggest rewards have been from giving back to nature through volunteer work and citizen science. This has been mostly through involvement with natural area land trusts, nature education orgs, chestnut restoration and eBird observations. I am now getting back into plants with iNat.