My husband found his calling while attended Texas A&M. At the time it didn’t require a degree. He dropped out in his junior year. For over 30 years my husband has worked in land surveying. It involves being out in the out of doors in every kind of weather imaginable, subjected to insects, snakes, angry animals and at times crazy armed neighbors. It requires lots of calculations and also knowledge that can only be learned by doing.

His knowledge and expertise brought him a lateral move to an inside job with his firm. His mother just was so relieved that her son didn’t have to do all that dirty manual labor any more. I wanted to throttle her.

As a survey party chief he was the head of his crew and directed them and taught them. He loved what he was doing. He is respected and well know amongst his peers as one of the best and brightest around and his skill was (and still is) an asset to those he works for but for years it seemed to me that he was seen by her as less than his petroleum VP son or her daughter with the fancy degrees.

It seems to me a strange madness that, in today’s world, Stradivarius would be seen as doing “dirty manual labor” fit for only the “undereducated” or as a hobby for the retired.