Kelly’s internship was quite an amazing and fruitful experience for her.  I described that a little bit here and a few other places.  She loved the day to day statistics work given to her.  Her boss was a good mentor and even a better teacher.  He recommended a couple of classes for her to take that were not on her plan.  Today, she decided to drop her Economics minor so she could take the classes he recommended.  This semester’s class is a graduate class in Linear Algebra.  There is only one session being taught and Christian is in it.  That is great.  Kelly and Christian have not had a class together since their last semester of community college when they took undergraduate Linear Algebra.  Then, next semester, she plans to take Real Analysis, a very ugly but very necessary mathematical proofs class.

I asked her, “Do you think you can handle it?”

She said, “Sure.  I have a completely different perspective now that I have seen what kind of work I will do after I get my degree.  It will be hard, but I can do it.  I am taking it because I know I will need it.”

There is nothing like a little bit of real-world experience doing something you love to provide some motivation to do something that is worthwhile, but hard.