Tag-Teaming New York

Longtime readers know the outlines of The Boy’s and The Girl’s stories. I’ve featured them over the years as part of a conscious effort to foreground what it means to try to be a decent parent while doing these jobs. The “Dean Dad” pseudonym, back when it was, reflected the two roles that consumed most of my waking hours, but it also reflected a choice to address work-life balance from a dad’s perspective. It chronicled my imperfect efforts to be present in both roles, in hopes of nudging the dialogue around working parents away from a singular focus on women. Men need to step up, too, and the way to do it is to do it. Accordingly, the family made regular appearances in columns over the years.

This one is an update for longtime readers.

This week, we have one kid moving out of New York City while the other moves in.

TB starts medical school in Pennsylvania on Friday. The Girl’s first day at her new full-time job in Manhattan is Wednesday. They’re basically tag-teaming the largest city in America.

It’s a busy time, but a gratifying one.

TB has wanted to be in the medical field since he was a kid. That goal enabled him to hang on through an organic chemistry class that did its best to defeat him. (Taking the class in the first academic year after COVID made it that much harder.) He got certified as an EMT and worked part-time as one while in high school. He has worked at free public clinics and a major research institution. He spent the three years after college as a clinical lab coordinator at a research hospital in Manhattan, with the consistent goal of jumping from there into either medical or graduate school.

Oddly enough, DOGE tipped him toward med school—he saw just how precarious the academic research enterprise is and decided that we’d always need medical doctors. Now that the current administration is putting time limits on international students that will effectively prevent them from getting doctorates, the research enterprise may become even more fragile. The situation is absurd, but I’m glad he was able to read it.

TG majored in English on the theory that she should play to her strengths. She’s shockingly bright, with almost eerie observational powers about people. She has a strong egalitarian sense that plays out largely through a feminist lens. It’s fun to see where she applies that gaze. At the honors graduation ceremony at UMD, the English honors grads’ thesis titles were listed in the program. Nearly all of them were explicitly about contemporary writers’ treatments of race and/or gender, except hers. She wrote on Milton’s influence on Keats, which seems almost daring now. She wanted to challenge herself. I wouldn’t call her contrarian, but she’s absolutely willing to ignore trends in the service of answering a question she considers more compelling at the time.

Graduating without an immediate job was stressful, of course. My sense was that if she could get to the interview stage, she’d be fine; her intelligence and poise are palpable. That turned out to be true. Any longtime hiring manager has had the experience of seeing candidates who were more impressive in person than on paper; I’ve noticed those folks tend to be superstars upon hire. I suspect her new employer will be very happy as it discovers just what she brings to the table.

As parents, of course we’re proud. I don’t deny some bias. We wanted to raise kids who would become capable, independent adults with reliable moral compasses. That happened. And they’re both wildly smart, which is a terrific bonus.

I’ll get back to my regular policy-focused writing soon enough. For now, a little parental celebration is in order. Yes, it will be a busy week. But when it’s done, we’ll have one in med school and the other working full-time. I’ll take it.