A Father’s Blessing

My father is a hard worker. He’d come home at the end of a long work day, often after 8pm, grumpy with low blood sugar and with the fatigue of a day rolling the stone back up the hill.

I have recollections of steering clear of him until he had a cold plate of something, because chances were, if he saw you before he ate, you were going to have a problem of some sort.

And yet somehow I have a strong sense of my father being on my side. I have some recollections of the kinds of encouragement, appreciation, and praise he bestowed on me.

I also have evidence (see Exhibit A).

The backstory on this flowchart is that I was an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) major at UC Berkeley. I was not a tremendous EECS student, which I believe resulted in part from my inconsistent study habits, and in part from my internal wiring being suitable neither for an electrical engineer, nor a computer scientist.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve got some related skills, but working with EE and CS types daily, I can assert with confidence that I’m unlike them in important ways.

All of that aside, there was a problem with a girl, and after getting an A on the midterm, I somehow managed to fail a math class.

As a consequence, the carefully regimented process of getting from 0 to EECS B.S. became disordered. Worse, I realized for the first time that I might not be able to do what I needed to do to succeed. I may just have been suffering from a delayed case of what I later heard called the curse of the gifted, but the changes I attempted to make to get back on track did not get me there.

As a consequence, as my fourth semester of college was winding down, my prospects were poor, and I was due at least to be weeded out of EECS, and possibly tossed out of school altogether.

After some conversations with the powers at work in the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Sciences, I had some phone conversations with my father.

Take a look at Exhibit A. Look at how each decision tree ends. Read the note at the bottom. Now notice the total lack of judgment or condemnation on how I got into this mess in the first place. There’s nothing like “We always told you she was no good,” or “If you had buckled down and studied more, this wouldn’t have happened,” or “Maybe you shouldn’t be going to baseball games if you want to get a degree in anything.” I believe all three of those statements were true, and yet this page conveys none of that.

I don’t know whether Dad was insightful enough to know I knew the truth of those statements, or wise enough to realize that what I needed was to look ahead so I could move ahead. In fact, blame for the school is implied in his title line, as though “Berkeley’s bureaucracy” were at fault. In his note about meeting with the College of Letters & Sciences advisor, Dad explicitly suggests blaming him for my situation. That wouldn’t have had any effect, other than to make me feel like a bigger jerk, but he offered it up nonetheless.

The path I ended up on doesn’t precisely match Dad’s flowchart. But he accurately mapped out the options, and put them in a context that showed how I could succeed, and what success would look like. For a son who’d spent way too many hours contemplating failure, that was a nice gift.

At the same time, he left me with one of the clearest evidences of how my parents have always blessed me: By obviously caring about me and my future; by avoiding condemnation; and by supporting me — via cheerleading, assistance, or even flow charts.

So now I, who have received so much, am responsible for passing this along to my kids.

Where’d I put that diagramming software?