Tonight I’m listening to B.B. King’s Better Not Look Down:
She said: “Oh B.B., sometimes it’s so hard to pull things together. Could you tell me what you think I ought to do?”
And I said:
Better not look down,
if you want to keep on flying
Put the hammer down,
keep it full speed ahead
Better not look back,
or you might just wind up crying
You can keep it moving,
if you don’t look down
Which I thought of when I read this quote from a female CS student in the book Unlocking the Clubhouse:
You have this bridge you have to walk over, and you just don’t look down… There were cases when I started looking down and it was really scary. I’d think “WHY am I putting myself through this?”… But I have to do this, anyway, because I have to.
I know how that student feels. At least once a year, someone who knows me asks me how I manage to juggle everything that I do—being a wife, a mother, a friend, a colleague, a teacher, a student, a mentor, a researcher, a writer. I shrug, and say I don’t know. And really, I don’t. Because if I stopped to think about how I juggle all these roles and responsibilities, I’d freeze. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d focus on the impossibility, rather than the reality.
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