Kim's graduation

Some of our very best friends in the world are Kim and Keith Williamson. They’re about our age and we’ve known each other for about 14 years. They have three very sharp and charming girls about the same ages as our boys. Now, I say friends and not acquaintances. These are the friends that come help you unpack when you move; the friends who you go on vacation with, the friends who will come visit you when you live in Chile and Miami.

Last night we celebrated Kim’s graduation from A&M. Kim started at A&M back in the ‘80s and life got in the way and she didn’t finish. She and Keith got married and they lived and worked in several different cities before moving back to College Station in the ‘90s. For Kim, finishing her degree while raising a family and running a household just seemed both unnecessary and unattainable.

A couple of years ago, though, she was working on campus and made the decision to go back to school and finish up her degree. She ground it out, a class or two each semester, some on-line classes, doing homework and assignments in the precious spare minutes here and there that a working mom of three has. And yesterday she crossed the finish line. Does she now vault herself into a higher paying job? Does she now get a bigger desk and more authority at work? Um, no.

I heard one time that if you educate a man, you educate a man. But if you educate a woman, you educate a family. That’s a little old-fashioned and it assumes kind of a sexist paradigm, but just think about how powerful a woman’s education is. The idea of a woman being educated is so powerful that in Afghanistan girls’ schools are one of the primary targets for the Taliban. See, educated women don’t let themselves be abused and subjugated. They know too much.

So the biggest pay-off for Kim’s achievement may be still in development. Kim showed her three daughters (for whom college is just around the corner) that it’s more than OK to invest time and effort in one’s education, that you should finish what you started, and that there’s a lot of dignity in setting out on a rocky, uphill path that results in a noble goal, even one with no apparent immediate financial reward.

Most of the time, we Americans are not very good at celebrating and commemorating special events. We’re too busy, too practical. But we need to celebrate this. Send Kim a congratulatory e-mail at kwilliamson@tamu.edu