I had a fraught relationship with my parents as well, and I too still deal with a hair-trigger temper, in part because of that. My dad also gave me a love of aviation which still stands, but I learned later that my destiny wasn't to become a professional pilot but a trainer of dolphins and sea lions (!) he came around to this very unusua…
I had a fraught relationship with my parents as well, and I too still deal with a hair-trigger temper, in part because of that. My dad also gave me a love of aviation which still stands, but I learned later that my destiny wasn't to become a professional pilot but a trainer of dolphins and sea lions (!) he came around to this very unusual career path, after seeing how I was floundering, directionless, in college after I stopped flight training. (Good thing I did that too--had I graduated in 1981 as planned as a 200-hour pilot with a Commercial rating, I would have run into the Reagan recession and Braniff International going bankrupt, throwing thousands of very well qualified pilots into an already saturated market).
Mine kept pushing college, and I kept pushing back, but after three years as a trainer with no college degree competing with colleagues with bachelor's and even Master's degrees for positions in major metropolitan aquariums, I got the hint, returned to college in 1991 focused and determined, and graduated in 1998 with a doctorate (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine), my only college degree.
His final lesson was teaching me what not to do with emotional pain. He basically drank and smoked himself to death. My dad didn't live long enough to even see me re-enter college; he died of cancer and complications from alcoholism and smoking at age 63.
I had a fraught relationship with my parents as well, and I too still deal with a hair-trigger temper, in part because of that. My dad also gave me a love of aviation which still stands, but I learned later that my destiny wasn't to become a professional pilot but a trainer of dolphins and sea lions (!) he came around to this very unusual career path, after seeing how I was floundering, directionless, in college after I stopped flight training. (Good thing I did that too--had I graduated in 1981 as planned as a 200-hour pilot with a Commercial rating, I would have run into the Reagan recession and Braniff International going bankrupt, throwing thousands of very well qualified pilots into an already saturated market).
Mine kept pushing college, and I kept pushing back, but after three years as a trainer with no college degree competing with colleagues with bachelor's and even Master's degrees for positions in major metropolitan aquariums, I got the hint, returned to college in 1991 focused and determined, and graduated in 1998 with a doctorate (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine), my only college degree.
His final lesson was teaching me what not to do with emotional pain. He basically drank and smoked himself to death. My dad didn't live long enough to even see me re-enter college; he died of cancer and complications from alcoholism and smoking at age 63.
A lesson of what not to do is an important one, one that many fail to heed..