These friends didn’t take away my resolve to succeed as I’d feared. They made me stronger.
Mileva’s ascent was certainly inspiring to me, but her story also pulled at my heartstrings from the start. Researching and reading about her life, I couldn’t help but think how lonely her youth must have been. She lived in somewhat removed Serbian towns as her family moved for her father’s job, and in each of those locations, she was always very different than the other girls and young women she encountered. She was unusually bright and more motivated than most—even attending an all-male gymnasium, ultimately—and this was compounded by her physical distinctiveness, a significant limp due to a hip condition. I imagined that she must have felt very alone and been the brunt of teasing and ridicule, until she made her first friends at university. And at that moment, she must have been able to picture a life as a professional woman with like-minded friends—for the very first time. How empowering that must have been for Mileva.
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