Family Tree Firsts Post is up!

The next post at Family Tree is up. Hope you enjoy!

My time at Indiana University was wonderful, but don't get the wrong impression. I was not a brilliant A student. To say that I was an average student would be fair; I got my degree which means I was able to pass my courses for the most part. However, I am very stubborn and the worst thing you can tell me is that I am not able to do something (I can tell myself that all I want, but you can't). It was made clear to me by a professor the end of my freshman year that I wouldn’t last as a Biology major... I now had a clear goal in mind. There is a diploma on my wall stating that I have a Bachelor's of Science in Biology… that means I won.

There was not a separate degree for genetics; but there were a ton of classes in the field.  My advisor said I could concentrate in that by taking those classes to fulfill my requirements, and then when I went to graduate school I could put this as my “emphasis” on applications.    I took every last one of them too: General Genetics, Human Genetics, Microbial Genetics, and all the labs too.  It was not easy, in fact I thought at one point I was never going to make it out of college.  More than once people suggested I should take an easier major, or switch to a BA, but stubbornly I pressed on.  Gee, I wonder where my kids get it. 

Genealogy just flowed naturally right into all that; I have been doing pedigree charts for years!   I have a knack for retaining unusual and seemingly random bits of information.  This comes in handy for the research that I have been doing on my family; it wasn’t so handy in school.  Flow charts and doodles dot my notebooks as I trace lines and make marginalia commentary.  That would be the artistic genes of my parents showing through.  Side note: my mom has been known to draw the anatomical images for the medical papers she has written, as well as birds and still life.

I was more than a little disappointed, as I stated in the FTF posts, about having a completed sample for my dad.  He has had some health issues lately, and once we get all those sorted mom has said he wants to get this done.  Dad is just as curious about his family as I am, thank goodness.   So fingers crossed and all that!

*Image: some of my books and articles on genetics