And they work/worked in real jobs, not those “Oh, we did some really good meetings this week.” You know who you are.
My mother, who just passed at age 97, was a child of the ‘Dirty Thirties’. She was forcibly matured in the Great Depression; her father lost his business with a wife and 3 young children. They made do; ‘root-hog-or-die’ was the Southern mindset.
When she went off to teacher’s college her family had moved more than 20 times. She taught public school for 35 years. She taught 2 congressmen, a host of other public officials, numerous entrepreneurs. One, John Townsend, in 2017 gave $50 million to my 2nd alma mater, the University of North Carolina.
All of them remembered Mom for 2 things: voluminous amounts of homework (that she checked nightly), and the-then-unheard-of approach of projectizing the school year.
My wife is a degreed chemical engineer. She grew up in a large family; her father was what we would call today, a “serial entrepreneur”. She helped in his businesses. Everyone in that family understood the concept of risk & reward.
She ‘made her bones’ directly overseeing the securing of 2100 metric tons of Manhattan Project-era, highly-toxic spent nuclear fuel, stored in 2 rickety concrete K Basins at the Hanford Site, less than a quarter-mile uphill from the mighty Columbia River.
From this point forward they put her in charge of two giant national laboratories. After she left government service she dragged me around the country & world working on large tech projects. Travel broadens everything.
Also, my wife can load & shoot a Russian RPG; I have pictures.
My daughter is a MD; an Ob-Gyn. Always academically talented, she did other things, physical things, sometimes risky things (IMHO); today she runs marathons & such. In high school she waited tables part-time during the school week at a local pie restaurant, many nights making over $100 in tips.
She still graduated well enough in an extremely competitive public high school to warrant a full scholarship in chemistry at a private Texas university (Go Horned Frogs!). Graduating Summa cum Laude.
When my daughter went to medical school, she chose another major Texas university, whose training facility was then–right on the border with Mexico. She experienced a massive dose of human healthcare calamities, almost as intense as a field hospital in an active war zone.
When time for residency competitions came, her operational application looked like Hawkeye’s from MASH. She got the best in Texas. Again, the law of risk & reward at work.
I have always supported these strong & capable women, and we’ve had many a philosophical conversation about it. As one of my fraternity’s teachings notes, “that pearl of great price is not had–merely for the asking”. I think they understand that on a visceral level.
They also understand there are no do-overs in this life; that’s a childhood fantasy. Really—no one is coming, not even the ‘gubbmint’, who so many wish could hit a magic reset button just for them.
Sellers is a South Park Republican who lives in incorporated Oro Valley. His background is federal tech-transfer commercialization.