I spent some time this weekend with a grandparent who, like many grandparents, tends to tell the same family stories over and over again. But, this weekend, I learned for the very first time that my great-grandmother dropped out of the eighth grade and never went back to school. Because she worked as a teacher for decades later in life, I had always assumed she finished high school. Each generation has been pushed a little further than the last: my great-grandma finished school with eighth grade; my grandma finished with twelfth grade; my mom finished with a bachelor’s degree; and I’ll finish with two graduate degrees.
My grandfather worked two jobs while my grandma worked another so that my mom could be the first woman (let alone the first person) in her extended family to go to college. While my accomplishment seems much smaller, we realized this weekend that I will be the first woman in my extended family (maternal and paternal) to earn a doctorate of any kind.
This gives me all kinds of warm-fuzzies about how each hard-working generation of my family has given the next the opportunity to do a bit more. But, of course, all my elder relatives really care about is whether I’ll hurry up and get married/produce grandkids already!
Read the full article: The P2P Family Tree