Had I NOT had the GI Bill for my first year of college I might never have gone to college at all. I had no self confidence I could succeed thanks to my dad who belittled me in many ways for years as I grew up at home.
Now I have spent about 40 years in academia (in labs and teaching undergraduates and graduate students) and in the reality world because I found I could work in jobs similar to what I learned to do in the Navy and earn my advanced degrees (a DVM, a Phd and an MSN)at the same time.
My husband and his Mom encouraged me times without number.
I am so grateful.
I do not understand why compulsory military experience is not still mandatory for every citizen capable of doing it, why women are not expected to be able to physically shoot guns and why vocational training is not perceived as am honor. Had I not known the difference between an electron and a zit, I would never have been happy as an adult.
My life would have been a “what if” question mark.
” thanks to my dad who belittled me in many ways for years as I grew up at home.”
MY favorite line from my dad was, “You’ll never amount to a hill of beans”, no matter what I did. Did you get that one? (When Dad died, we thought about planting beans around his grave.)