Page 54 - Self Talk

Call it dumb luck or a miracle, but I was the first person in my family to go to college. I vividly remember my mother’s advice back then: “If you really have your heart set on college, go into teaching or nursing because
it’ll always give you something to fall back on,” she stressed. My father, a career submariner who was then on a Nuke, pushed math and science, predicting that computers would be the wave of the future.
Growing up in the Navy, we were always on the move.
I attended 13 different schools up and down both coasts and in Hawaii when it was still a U.S. Territory. I excelled in school and graduated with honors, but that didn’t count for much at the University of Minnesota where my preparation paled next to my roommates.
After failing two math courses and stumbling through