Today we piled thirteen adults into a van and headed for Tulsa to tour the OSU BioMed research facility and meet with a couple of the researchers working there. They are married and alternately completed their undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and post-doctoral work.
High school sweethearts, they married and started a family before either of them even wanted to think about college. After working for a while as an auto mechanic, Dr. Tom got a job at a plant as a welder and took advantage of their tuition plan and started taking classes at a community college, as did his wife. By working together, and I mean one working while the other was attending school, they managed to raise two children and pull each other through a series of programs to achieve their goals, with Dr. Kath finishing her second post-doc as Dr. Tom was completing his Ph.D. They share a huge lab at OKU Center for Health Sciences and really seem to enjoy what they do as research and life partners.
Wow…and I thought juggling undergraduate education, a part-time job, and dog rescue was complicated! Where one went, the other had to have an opportunity available also. This may have limited their options, but it never deterred them from their objective – that both were worthy of achieving as much as possible.
“To him that will, ways are not wanting.” George Herbert’s Jacula Prudentusm (1640).
…and to her, too.