A bit of background: my hubby and I met as post collegiate athletes training for an Olympic Development team 16 years ago. I was doing a graduate program in education at the time and he took an interest in both my academics and running. A friendship developed and the rest is history.
When I got a college teaching job both my hubby and I enrolled in HTML and C++ classes in the computer sciences department. This was during rhe dotcom era. He was much better at it than me. But then again, despite the fact that we both did language undergrad programs (him in English lit and me in Spanish lit) he rocked the gaming world. I remember saying "hey, you are so good at programming those games you do -- have you ever thought about going back and doing computer science?"
When the fall enrollment came up, we both went and had coffee and signed up for classes in this department together. That was enough to get him hooked. So, when we moved for another college position for me, he officially enrolled at that college as a computer science major, graduated with a second degree, this time a Bachelor of Science.
He was considering a high school teaching job until he met my co-worker's husband. This is a person we are forever grateful for. He asked my husband if he ever thought of the aerospace industry. We both were clueless. He got my husband an internship. Soon afterward he was offered a permanent job but then needed to enroll into a graduate program for job security. This was at a time when our son was born, our son had several medical complications along the way, then 4 years later we lost our daughter at delivery, I entered a graduate program to help our son 6 years ago, then his wife got cancer (me). He's had a full plate and reached the point where no more extensions for the graduate thesis was possible. He had a two week window of cranking out that thesis or the entire 8 years of sacrifice would expire without a degree.
So, he took a full two week vacation to crank that puppy out and did it with flying colors!
He originally didn't want to do the ceremonies since he's pretty low key -- but I convinced him that it is a family affair -- our son deserves to see BOTH his Mommy and Daddy walk at commencement since he's seen us as students pretty much his whole life. Thankfully he agreed after a few months of convincing. To see his happy face at graduation was amazing. He seemed so happy, proud, excited. Our son got to see both of us in this special event (his ceremony was a week ago today; mine was Tuesday of that same week). Our 8 year old son now talks about wanting to graduate from college. I'm just so so joyful of this experience. I feel grateful and blessed beyond words.
No comments:
Post a Comment