Once one of my former straight-A student-athletes came back from her first year of college and told me she got a C in one of her intro to engineering courses, but didn& #39;t drop the major because she remembered me telling her how statistically that& #39;s what girls do but boys don& #39;t and

all in the name of trying to keep a "good" GPA; girls are more likely to switch to an easier major and graduate with a higher GPA, but guys are more likely to stick to the major through a "poor" GPA because they want the degree, and

that only adds to the gender divide in the high-paying engineering field. "Resist the urge," I told her, "because those boys will and you& #39;re smarter than that. GPAs don& #39;t matter in life, but the degree could."

That conversation was one of my shining moments as an educator, a long game payoff, of women educating women. Twenty year old me learned it from Dr. Battle, an extraordinary woman teaching statistics in education, and a decade later it passes through and on to the next generation

and how. Gotta plant those seeds. You never know when they& #39;ll take root later on.