My son David - the rocket scientist

David is my oldest son and he is a rocket scientist. When he was 3 and my mom asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his response was a paleontologist. I'm not even sure I can spell it correctly! So here's the short version of David's life. He went off to study aerospace engineering at NC State after high school and discovered partying was more fun than studying. He left the program and went to App State, yup the party school. LOL After kicking around Boone for awhile, he came back to Charlotte and worked at Best Buy selling computers and then fixing them. But he realized his life was heading nowhere and went to CPCC and corrected his grades from State. He crawled back to the dean of the aerospace eng. dept. at State and begged to get back in the program. The dean gave him a semester's probation to prove himself. And he did - he graduated summa cum laude! Then he went to U of Maryland and got his Masters degree in aerospace engineering. But when he really decided to get serious (hahah), he enrolled at Univ of Arizona in planetary science. His thesis is about the late heavy bombardment. He had a research paper published yesterday in the scientific journal Nature. He is brilliant! And I say that fully aware he's my son and I am biased, but hey! A mom is permitted to gloat. This is a write-up of his research paper in case any of you are interested in reading about the asteroid belt. http://uanews.org/node/24237

my angst

My goal since I came to Queens in 2006 has been to finish up my undergrad work and enroll in the MFA program for creative writing. This class is making me question whether I'm a good enough writer to even consider that path. All my life teachers and friends have told me I should write and I have filled notebooks and scratched ideas on post-it notes all throughout my house. But in this class I feel a glaring gap in my writing skills. Maybe I'm just getting exposure to writers I've never read before. I am awed by their talent and feel that their craft supercedes anything I could write. Slowly taking this journey for the past three years, taking two classes per semester, I am almost at the end of the first half of my goal and suddenly I feel a lot of angst in my spirit. Have I chosen the right path? I feel so unworthy, so frustrated. Perhaps creative writing is not for me. I wonder if every writer has to go through a period of angst when they feel they just aren't up to par. Maybe these feelings drive a writer to push though the frustration and find their voice. Maybe I'm just tired and need a break from writing every day for the purpose of a grade.