<p>So common, especially for women in our mothers’ generation. When I look at my mom’s and my dad’s old report cards, Mom was definitely “college material” while Dad was iffy. Of course, he was the one with the Master’s Degree and Mom didn’t go to college.</p>
<p>My MIL’s dad would have sent her to college to become (a) a teacher, or (b) a nurse. Since she didn’t want to be either of those, no college.</p>
<p>I marvel at people my age who mention what college their grandmothers graduated from. I don’t know if my grandmothers were even allowed to finish HS. (My Mom’s parents wanted her to quit school at 16 and get married - too many mouths to feed!)</p>
<p>missypie, my grandmother was born in 1894 and had a master’s degree as did all three of my grandfather’s sisters, born in similar timeframe. My mother and all of her sisters also went to college, with at least two going on to grad school. I don’t remember it being talked about as a big deal. They were all teachers and as such it wasn’t a particularly lucrative or unusual thing to do. Somebody had to be a teacher even at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>The women I’ve met in AAUW who are 90+ – all of whom had to be college graduates to join – have pretty much uniformly been amazing women. One I really miss was a school teacher who had never married – she taught Latin & Greek, had earned two Fullbright fellowships, traveled everywhere, and was happy to discuss the what Cuba was like before Castro when she visited. One of the most amusing dinner guests ever.</p>
<p>Busy day today. Missed you all! Just back from the gym and now making dinner for myself as H is meeting D2 for dinner for father/daughter bonding. Trying to eat healthy with roasted veggies and chicken breast but I may have to have a glass of wine…maybe. ;)</p>
<p>I used to be in AAUW when I lived in Ohio. Loved it.</p>
<p>A few years ago I read that in the early part of the 20th century many Italian immigrants were not in favor of educating their children. That totally shocked me because in my paternal grandmother’s family her Italian immigrant mother insisted that her 7 daughters and one son finish high school (all except one did). My grandmother was the oldest and while she did not complete college she went for a year or two and was granted a teaching certificate. This was greatly admired in my family. It never occurred to me that my great grandmothers attitude toward education was unusual.</p>
<p>I am 55 and so much has changed for women in my own lifetime! Saw the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” several years ago with a friend and our D’s. The girls just didn’t “get” that most women in the 1950’s did not have both a career and a family. I was in HS when Title IX passed, no sports for girls before then (not that I had any athletic ability, see my previous posts!). </p>
<p>My MIL would be 92 and had a Master’s in biology. Her older sister had a PhD in biology. Their dad was a physician but neither of his girls became doctors.</p>
<p>I am the first college graduate on my mother’s side.
My father had 2 years of college and one Cousin graduated before me.
It is somewhat amazing that I come from this background as my H is from the many many great generations of college/MD background. Many who lived their lives in China and Pakastan. While I grew up in Indiana and saw the ocean for the first time at</p>
<p>Good morning. Have an early meeting but thought I’d poke my head in to say hi! I’ll have to try to catch up with that program --sounds interesting.
It may sound strange but I’ve always envied friends with university-educated parents. My own mother didn’t graduate high school, having gone to work in a shoe factory by age 15 after running away from her adopted parents. She was a hard worker who ended up in an management position at a civil service (sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it ;)) and its kind of amazing that she ended up doing reasonably well for herself.</p>
<p>Years later I ran into a newspaper editor who had grown up in our small town who’d admitted as a boy he’d been in love with my mom because she seemed so liberated, having a career and being the type who could throw a fancy dinner party one night and then be seen the next with a wrench in her hand fixing her own snowmobile (little did he realize that some of these traits were by attrition…given her husband ;)</p>
<p>But she had approximately zero interest in any of my academic achievements, and wouldn’t have anything to do with me going away to school (though I did anyway.) So in our family, you sort of rebelled by doing well in school ;)</p>
<p>H’s dad quit school at 16 to work for the phone company…that it was 1944 explains a lot. The thing is, as a union man who bought stock in his company, that happened to stay afloat and prosper, he has ended up well off. (Also helps that as you know, he hates to part with a penny.) FIL has extremely generous pension benefits and just doesn’t get that we won’t be able to afford the type of retirement that he has had. (No “other people’s money” for us.) Each of his kids finished college, two with masters degrees, all paid for themselves. The inlaws are indifferent to academic achievement.</p>
<p>Stager is due here momentarily… lI am already exhausted.</p>
<p>The tough part of my family is that on my Dad’s side, every person born into it had a college degree, including my Great Grandmother, who graduated from Wellesly. On my H’s side, all I really know is that his Dad’s side were all Yalies and his dad was the first to go to not and was the shame having chosen Duke. His Mom’s side was one of those hit hard by the depression and was on his gap year hunting in Montana and had to come back and get a job. My Mom went to Tufts. Yeah… you pretty much were going to college in my family. And when older D dropped out… she took a lot of flak from the family on both sides for a while.</p>
<p>My father and his brothers went to college but neither sister did nor their parents. My mother was an only child and neither she nor her parents attended college. I am the third born daughter and was the first to graduate from college although my oldest sister lasted a year. My 4th sister attended but didn’t graduate and then my 5th sister did graduate as a chemical engineer. Her twin sister never attended college. </p>
<p>Change of topic…has any one ever had reclaimed wood floors? I am trying to decide if I want to pay the significant up charge for them at the cabin. I like the look and the idea that I wouldn’t worry about scratches and marks but just not sure if I want to pay the price.</p>
<p>Maybe because we’re Jewish, but my grandparents on both sides had a very strong commitment to education. Three were immigrants, one was freshly first generation. But, on my mother’s side, everyone got as much education as they wanted. They worked to make lives for their kids. My uncle was a lawyer, another uncle a geologist, and my mother got a PhD in Spanish. On my father’s side, my father got a PhD in Physics and my aunt a PhD in Math and later a law degree. Many went to Brooklyn College or CCNY but my father got a full scholarship to NYU when only rich kids went there (from his perspective). They went to very high-end schools for graduate degrees.</p>
<p>Jewish families do seem to have often had an exceptional commitment to education. My dad’s public high school in Far Rockaway, NY (definitely a working class neighborhood) produced three eventual Nobel prize winners: Feynman (physics), Blumberg (Medicine), Richter (physics). Dad was more of the Irish persuasion. (He did talk about how lucky he had been to have really good science and math teachers because of the many highly educated Jewish emigres not able to get university positions, and all the women who didn’t have a lot of academic alternatives either.)</p>
<p>My dad graduated form Georgetown in 1936, spent the summer travelling around Europe and took in the Berlin Olympics. (He always told us that he was the sub for Jesse Owens. Ha!) Then he went to Georgetown med, graduated in 1940 (during the Depression??), did a residency, married my mom in June 1942 and the next day went to Europe for 4 years. Caught TB while caring for Holocaust survivors while liberating camps.
My mom graduated from Pratt, did some modelling and generally had a great time at the Times Square USO during the war.
Despite a long line of investment in education, my daughter was the first female in my family to go away to college. We all commuted!</p>
<p>Just returned from 4 hours in the ER with H who has an undiagnosed something or other that causes sever GI pain. This has been going on for 2 plus years. He is home and feels fine but this was his worst episode. I do not know how to get him to think outside of the box (ie go to Mayo or somewhere) but I did manage to teach one doc and 3 nurses and a lab today what Porphyria is and how to ake a urine sample ( in dark with a container that is covered in foil and then on ice). Even H was cooperative. It is a rare thing but I just want an answer now. Very tired.</p>
<p>Ok, feeling better. The sadest thing was when they need the sexual abuse cart ( a very tall large rolling cart) that was stored in H’s room. You just knew…made me sad. H is feeling fine.</p>
(little did he realize that some of these traits were by attrition…given her husband ;)</p>