Apple off the family tree

Today it is exactly 5 years ago since my mum, my brother and I suffered the hardest day of our lives when my dad suddenly died. Now, five years later, I still miss him every bit as much as I did then but life does go on and so do we. I was still in the first year of my Ph.D. back then and I used to go home at least every other weekend. A lot has changed since. I obtained my doctorate, decided bioscience was not the place for me and moved to the UK to do a degree in Health Management, a discipline right at the crossroads of what my mum does and what my dad did.

I discuss a lot of what I learn on my course with my mum. She has the practical experience from the medical world and can tell me how all of my wonderful text book theories work out in the real world. But I also so would have loved to discuss these things with my dad and hear his thoughts from a manager's perspective. I am sure he too would have had some things to say about some of what I am being taught. In some regards my dad was quite 'old school'. For instance, he didn't like slick slide presentations at all. He much preferred using flip charts to draw his diagrams on. Maybe he would have eventually come around and learned how to work PowerPoint. Who knows?

I don't know how he would have felt about my career change. I think he would have supported it though. Although I am constantly being told I look the spitting image of my mother, I think that in character I take after my father quite a lot. I'd like to believe that in what ever career lies ahead of me in the near future, I will be able to combine the best of both my parents.