Longtime readers know the outlines of The Boy\u2019s and The Girl\u2019s stories. I\u2019ve featured them over the years as part of a conscious effort to foreground what it means to try to be a decent parent while doing these jobs. The \u201cDean Dad\u201d pseudonym, back when it was, reflected the two roles that consumed most of my waking hours, but it also reflected a choice to address work-life balance from a dad\u2019s perspective. It chronicled my imperfect efforts to be present in both roles, in hopes of nudging the dialogue around working parents away from a singular focus on women. Men need to step up, too, and the way to do it is to do it. Accordingly, the family made regular appearances in columns over the years.<\/p>\n
This one is an update for longtime readers.<\/p>\n
This week, we have one kid moving out of New York City while the other moves in.<\/p>\n
TB starts medical school in Pennsylvania on Friday. The Girl\u2019s first day at her new full-time job in Manhattan is Wednesday. They\u2019re basically tag-teaming the largest city in America.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a busy time, but a gratifying one.<\/p>\n
TB has wanted to be in the medical field since he was a kid. That goal enabled him to hang on through an organic chemistry class that did its best to defeat him. (Taking the class in the first academic year after COVID made it that much harder.) He got certified as an EMT and worked part-time as one while in high school. He has worked at free public clinics and a major research institution. He spent the three years after college as a clinical lab coordinator at a research hospital in Manhattan, with the consistent goal of jumping from there into either medical or graduate school. <\/p>\n
Oddly enough, DOGE tipped him toward med school\u2014he saw just how precarious the academic research enterprise is and decided that we\u2019d always need medical doctors. Now that the current administration is putting time limits on international students that will effectively prevent them from getting doctorates, the research enterprise may become even more fragile. The situation is absurd, but I\u2019m glad he was able to read it.<\/p>\n
TG majored in English on the theory that she should play to her strengths. She\u2019s shockingly bright, with almost eerie observational powers about people. She has a strong egalitarian sense that plays out largely through a feminist lens. It\u2019s fun to see where she applies that gaze. At the honors graduation ceremony at UMD, the English honors grads\u2019 thesis titles were listed in the program. Nearly all of them were explicitly about contemporary writers\u2019 treatments of race and\/or gender, except hers. She wrote on Milton\u2019s influence on Keats, which seems almost daring now. She wanted to challenge herself. I wouldn\u2019t call her contrarian, but she\u2019s absolutely willing to ignore trends in the service of answering a question she considers more compelling at the time. <\/p>\n
Graduating without an immediate job was stressful, of course. My sense was that if she could get to the interview stage, she\u2019d be fine; her intelligence and poise are palpable. That turned out to be true. Any longtime hiring manager has had the experience of seeing candidates who were more impressive in person than on paper; I\u2019ve noticed those folks tend to be superstars upon hire. I suspect her new employer will be very happy as it discovers just what she brings to the table. <\/p>\n
As parents, of course we\u2019re proud. I don\u2019t deny some bias. We wanted to raise kids who would become capable, independent adults with reliable moral compasses. That happened. And they\u2019re both wildly smart, which is a terrific bonus. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll get back to my regular policy-focused writing soon enough. For now, a little parental celebration is in order. Yes, it will be a busy week. But when it\u2019s done, we\u2019ll have one in med school and the other working full-time. I\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime readers know the outlines of The Boy\u2019s and The Girl\u2019s stories. I\u2019ve featured them over the years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10069,67,4619,20272,3415,9,11,10,12],"class_list":["post-300482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}