QUESTION: 
Is it fun to be a Mars scientist? 

ANSWER from Dr. Jack Farmer on January 11, 1997:
The short answer is YES!  The long answer is from from my biography online 
(http://quest.arc.nasa.gov:80/mars/team/farmer.html), where I wrote:

The best thing about my job is the excitement of exploring ancient
worlds, either on Earth by looking back in time at old rocks, or in
space by looking at old planetary surfaces or the planetary materials
brought to the Earth as meteorites. My job is also fun because of all
the fascinating people I meet, and the interesting seminars and
discussions we have every week. It's wonderfully challenging to go
into the field and try and reconstruct past events from the meager clues
provided in the rocks, and it is great fun to bring samples back to the
lab and tease out more clues using the microscope and other tools.
Sometimes I feel like I'm Sherlock Holmes solving a crime. And I
have often thought, if I ever stopped doing geology, I would like to
try forensics.