Hurricane Jill

Yay Kim!

I want to take a minute to congratulate my friend (and college roommate) Kim on her prestigious and well-deserved award.  She makes it all look easy, but trust me, she had an incredibly tough road as an undergrad and then a grad student.  My memories are fuzzy, but I think we got to be friends while working a service project together.  At the time she was pre-med, and struggling with one of the early weed-out courses.  I was an economics major, but only on paper.

Her freshman chemistry professor told her point blank that she had no business being pre-med, or a science major.  She was obviously here for her MRS degree, and should stop wasting everyone’s time.  Or something to that effect.  Which was consistent with my own experience with that professor, and that of several friends.  I won’t mention his name, but that episode kept him from getting a very prestigious teaching award, with significant money attached.  Shame on him for thinking that anyone could be so insignificant as to be treated that way with impunity.   You just never know what the future holds for a freshman in college, and any college professor should know better than to judge like that.

I could go on with the examples of people who underestimated and misjudged her, because it was the story of her whole undergrad experience.  But really I just want to offer my sincere congratulations on the award.  She has excelled, from circumstances in which even an average career is a great accomplishment.