“As a female scientist I am still unusual, but in my heart I was never anything else. I never heard a single story about a living female scientist, never saw one on television” (18).
For Hope Jahren, growing up in family that could be classified as middle class to slightly below middle class, there were no real expectations that she would one day become a scientist, especially since she was a girl. Her mother who was the “both the poorest and the smartest girl” in her county tried and failed in her pursuit to receive an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota and become a scientist. Sadly, Hope’s mother dropped out of school because she “couldn’t attend the long afternoon laboratory sections and still put in enough babysitting hours to pay for her tuition.” Eventually, she settled for a bachelors degree in English literature.
Fortunately, Hope was not in the same financial bind as her mother and was able to graduate from the University of Minnesota with a degree in geology and become a scientist. I firmly believe that Hopes determination, passion, and drive all came from the simple fact that she wanted to make her mother proud. She wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that her mother was deprived of and make the most out of it. It seems as though Hope became the person that her mother once wanted to be. Because of this, Hope dedicated the book, Lab Girl, to her mother as a tribute. Instead of writing a textbook, Hope modified the book to include the memoir of her life, something that a person with an English degree would do, as an ode to her mother. It was for these reasons that Hope Jahren dedicated the book to her mother.
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