Weissman was not an exceptionally good student in high school. He started assisting with medical research in 1956, when he got a summer job at
Montana Deaconess Hospital. He preferred the idea of caring for
laboratory mice and assisting in the lab to washing cars or similar jobs that were available to teenaged boys in the area. He was inspired by the idea that he could think scientifically and respond to a questioning,
Socratic method, rather than didactic lectures about scientific facts. He ran his first experiment there during his senior year in high school, to see whether he could repeat an experiment that had recently been published. He attributes his admission to college and medical school to the resulting publications, rather than to his less-than-perfect grades. ==Awards==