On Being an Empty Nester Pt. 3

It didn’t go the way I thought it would go. Again.

When last we visited this subject, my son was studying in Europe. While in his one year program in Norway, he was accepted to a university in Berlin. It was going to be another adventure…until he decided to come home, instead.

When you are 20, the world is a shifting landscape. After all, your world is expanding, your brain is still growing, possibilities opening. What you think you want to be at 18 will likely change, too. He decided to move his attention back into STEM and toward space science, pressing toward the emerging field of astrobiology. Now, he was not really a math and science guy in highschool, so this was suprising. What suprised me more was that he wanted to come home for a couple of years to do it. However, STEM studies are best done in the United States if you are American and your final goal is related to space travel, so he was wise to come back to California to do it. And just like that, world travel, for now, is paused. He has a seriousness about his path and is excelling. He just finished the fall semester with a 4.0 and is out running a self imposed 10K as a write this. The plan is to transfer to a 4 year university and join the AFROTC and commision, working toward pilot training. All while working almost 50 hours a week between 4 part time jobs. Because he wants his own money and his own…