I'm following Psyc Girl's example and making the most out of these interview questions that EcoGeoFemme asked me (many moons ago). I'm going to start with the first question she asked me:
How did you decide to get into biochemistry? What made you choose that over some other field of biology, like physiology or proteomics or forestry or something?
At the risk of sounding horribly corny, it was my high school chemistry teacher and biology teacher. I really enjoyed both classes. For some reason, chemistry just made sense to me. The way everything in the world could be reduced to these tiny atoms and the entire world was governed by how they interacted with each other was just really cool to me.
When I got to college, my school didn't offer a biology major, so I majored in chemistry. [I might've majored in physics had my intro to physics class been a bit better taught. Unfortunately, the physics program here seems to be averse to attracting students (our prof repeatedly told us that only stupid people needed this stuff explained... and sometimes I needed this stuff explained).] Still, I liked the idea of working on biological systems, so I switched to biochemistry in my junior year.
As for anything else, I kind of think that everything can be reduced down to chemistry (including physiology and proteomics). So, I feel like it's a good foundation for anything else I might want to study or know about (except maybe forestry, I had the hardest time identifying poison ivy as a kid).