Mastering the Art of Lemonade

My most popular slide at a recent talk

Visual--14 year old me debating with my parents. Them "you should be a doctor or lawyer and go to a 'proper East Coast University" (can you tell I was first gen?). Me "I want to study art or music". Them "you'll starve and we're not supporting any starving Bohemians in this family". Me...I stopped studying art and music, and focussed on pre-college prep classes. 

But! I was a born rebel and continued studying art and playing my piano once I left home.... I snuck out of work to take classes, I squeezed them in between having my kids, and raising them, and I never gave up.

My speech was ostensibly about going from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to STEAM (stem with an A for inclusion of the Arts). And my art does benefit from my STEM education. As a former Earth Scientist, (they didn't get their lawyer or doctor, but I could be only so rebellious before tuition stopped) I use my knowledge of pigments, and properties of light and fluids in all that I do, and often refer to the scientific properties of what I'm using to come up with new methods and techniques. 

However, the real gist of the talk was about chasing dreams, and making baby steps along a diverted path, that might get you back to the one you'd prefer to be following...

 Mastering the art of making lemonade out of lemons!!!

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