My mom, having grown up in rural Utah where she got married at 17 and never thought about going to college, had similar reactions to my educational ambitions gr

My mom, having grown up in rural Utah where she got married at 17 and never thought about going to college, had similar reactions to my educational ambitions growing up. When I was 15, I sent an application to a prestigious summer program at Phillips Andover Academy. When I didn't hear back after a couple weeks and started to get worried (I had no idea how long applications took to process), my mom said "I didn't think you were going to get in anyway, it's alright." (I received an acceptance letter a couple weeks after that) Similarly, we were watching Mona Lisa Smile, and I said "Oh, I think I got a brochure from Wellesley." Her immediate response was "No you didn't" I ran up to get the brochure, and she just said "Whoa, that's really weird." She wasn't being mean, she just had a very clear distinction between "things we do" and "things other people do." It just wasn't possible, in her mind, to cross that boundary. There was just no thought in her mind that someone _she_ gave birth do could go to places or do things she only saw on TV. She wasn't trying to discourage me -- she always wanted the best for me, but there were still some things that she wasn't capable of imagining possible. If she wasn't capable of imagining that these things were possible, the best course of action was to let me down gently. Having talked to peers with similar backgrounds, I think this is an extremely common phenomenon, and one that holds a lot of potentially-successful people back, before they ever realize they're being held back.