Editing Melody Leigh Haverstaad (section)

===Pre-Starfleet Life===
Melody was not quite your standard girl from Earth, she ended up seeing more of the universe then most as both her parents were Civilian Consultants to Starfleet for Astrophysics, and often attended symposiums on Federation Worlds to help train Starfleet Science Officers in their field. They almost always took their daughter along, and that traveling more-or-less convinced a young Melody Haverstaad that she was destined to join the fleet. She found her parents occupation… stuffy.

She didn’t exactly throw herself into preparation for it, her desire to see the Stars didn’t become over-whelming or an obsession until she was a late teenager. She spent her childhood being home-schooled from her parents, and engaging in tom-boyish persuits that would get her in quite a bit a trouble a number of times. 

Melody was always a physical child; she spent lots of her free time running, climbing, biking, swimming, or any number of other physical activities. She did not lack for brains in any manner, but she usually chose not to apply herself to what her parents believed was her full potential. She would later admit to them, while on a brief leave after she had graduated Starfleet Crewman School, that she had taken average-to-high marks only to annoy them. As she said it, “I didn’t want to be stuffed into a lab all day, thanks much.”

She finished school at age 17, 3 months before her 18th birthday. Her parents begged her to attend University when the next Semester started up again, but she deferred and instead signed up with Starfleet the day after her 18th birthday.