Mother and community college professor

Abstract

When do you decide you want to be a chemist or to teach chemistry or to be a professor? I wasn't sure what I wanted to do even after arriving in graduate school. Then suddenly I did. But that's the middle of the story, so let's go back to the beginning. As a kid I imagined being married and having a family in the 1950s Midwest norm of around two boys and two girls. Very few women in our small town worked outside the home. Most married soon after high school and had families immediately. By the time I got out of college and into grad school in the early 1970s, I had settled on 2 kids as a good number. In that later era of women's liberation, I also thought that it would be a good idea to be at least 25 when I married. This was in stark contrast to the conditions in my small town.