This is a guest post from Tim Gier. He blogs thought­fully here. I will always be grate­ful to Seth Godin, who made the intro­duc­tion, even though he has never met either of us.

In 1977, I was 17 years old. I began my col­lege career at Brandies Uni­ver­sity in Waltham, Mass­a­chu­setts. I had always known that I would go to col­lege, and I knew that I would go to a school in Mass­a­chu­setts, my birth­place. Even though I was only a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can, from where I sat, I was part of the her­itage of this coun­try all the way back to the Mayflower and Ply­mouth Rock.

But, I didn’t last. I dropped out of Bran­deis before the first semes­ter ended. My head wasn’t in the game, nor was it in the game when I enrolled in the Uni­ver­sity of Florida. I think that sec­ond col­lege excur­sion lasted only a few weeks. I wanted to get on with liv­ing and fig­ured I knew enough already.

Do you know how some­thing nags at you all the time, like a scratch you can­not itch? I’ve felt that way my whole life. My men­tal pic­ture of myself always included a col­lege diploma, and that pic­ture was always incomplete.

Fast for­ward 25 years. My younger daugh­ter Melissa grad­u­ated from high school in 2002. Like her sis­ter before her, I expected her to enroll in the Uni­ver­sity of Florida. My kids lives wouldn’t have miss­ing pieces like mine did. Unfor­tu­nately, Melissa and UF had dif­fer­ent plans. When she wasn’t accepted, she went to work.

Melissa began work­ing at a local child care & activ­ity cen­ter. It was a chal­leng­ing job which required a lot of patience. Luck­ily, she didn’t inherit my impa­tience! Work­ing long hours for low pay, she even­tu­ally got a sec­ond job at a church day care facil­ity. Melissa’s a spit-fire, and when she’s on the job, peo­ple know and remem­ber her. So, she often had oppor­tu­ni­ties to babysit for peo­ple as the result of her day­care work. She ended up babysit­ting for the regional vice pres­i­dent of a bank.

Not long after meet­ing him, the bank offi­cer offered Melissa a job, which she read­ily accepted. She rose quickly at the bank. Then she did some­thing which sur­prised and impressed me. While work­ing full time in a career posi­tion, Melissa re-entered school, tak­ing a full load of classes online. Night after night she’d study and push her­self to do the best she could.

Because good things come to those who hus­tle, after a cou­ple of years, Melissa had an oppor­tu­nity to take a job with the US Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment, work­ing for the Depart­ment of Veteran’s Affairs. Her older sis­ter works there too.

Last year, Melissa grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Florida, with a degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, hav­ing never stepped foot in a col­lege class­room. She’s an amaz­ing kid, and I couldn’t be any more proud of her than I am.

And me? Well, two years ago I real­ized that only I could fin­ish the incom­plete pic­ture of my life. With my incred­i­ble daugh­ter as my inspi­ra­tion, I enrolled in col­lege after 32 years. I’ll grad­u­ate in 2012.

Par­ents are sup­posed to teach their chil­dren well, and I have tried to do what I can. But I’ve learned more from my chil­dren than they’ve ever learned from me... patience, per­sis­tence, goal set­ting, and a made-up-mind are all one needs to accom­plish great things.

When I grow up, I want to be just like my daughter.