One, her ex-husband is not dispelling stereotypes about bankers. Second, her experiences are just such a prime example of how women’s and men’s careers are differentially impacted by parenting, which comes up in the book chapter (noted in my post) and my paper for leadership. Third, she described an experience that arose from being a woman as women were entering science more frequently. She was in college, and taking physics, chemistry, computer science, and calculus, and got a bad cold that took her out of class for a week or two. She decided to drop physics, and in her only encounter with her male adviser when she went to drop, he said, “Oh, you’re going to be one of those flighty females, huh?” She’s told me this story many times; clearly it stuck. 
	This exercise is the best thing for my relationship with my mother. She is not an open person, and there is much about her that I (and my father) don’t know. I think the fact that this is a formal and assigned task, and less threatening since it is supposed to be career-focused, makes her more willing to open up about things. And I know how important it is for her to be remembered—I made her a portfolio of her various projects and I have never seen her so moved—but she doesn’t initiate sharing. Through learning about her experiences, I also just have so much more understanding and respect for the hard choices and constraints that she has faced, and am so impressed with her. 
