I was fortunate to grow up in a middle-class home with two hardworking parents who enjoyed both reading and mathematics.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Both my parents instilled an interest in science and mathematics.
My parents were determined to move into the middle class.
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. The three things that they focused on were reading, writing, and arithmetic. My goodness, this is a novel idea in this modern society. I was really good at all three of these things. I was particularly good at math.
My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.
In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.
Well, I had a lot of help from my father with the soldering and so on, and he was very good at math and was fascinated with computers, and so I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of exposure going all the way back to high school - this was in the 1960s.
I got out of difficult situations when many of my classmates didn't because I was smart, and I was lucky, and my parents were amazingly literate and helpful.
In my family, education was something you endured. My parents weren't educated past high school, and the only book in our house was a 'Reader's Digest' condensed book. Can you imagine?
When I was growing up, I was lucky to benefit from a first class education.
I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.