It should come as no surprise that with an English teacher for a mother, that education was always treated with great importance.  However, to my parents credit, they were incredibly open minded as to the educational path choosen.   In high school, I had serious dreams of becoming a fashion designer or interior decorator.  My excellent math skills and high SAT scores mattered little to me.  In my junior year of school, I did not take the normal college prep classes - who needs extra chemistry or pre-calculus classes anyways.  Gentle prodding about wasting my talent and abilities along with a career assesment eventually steered me into an engineering degree.  But I always remember that if I had truly insisted on a career in fashion they probably would have let me.  They knew that I could always return to college for a different degree if the first one didn’t work out.  A valuable lesson that I would have never found in any classroom - do overs are always there for those willing to learn from their mistakes.