For New Year’s Eve, we went out for a fancy dinner with the oldest kiddo who is home from college and then made an appearance at a holiday party. My social skills were not great pre-pandemic, but post-pandemic and after living with a national forest as my neighbor and menopause brain, well, let’s just say I do the best that I can. So when the person at the bar shared she was a developmental pediatrician at MUSC, my obvious conversation starter was my first job. I went with… “my first job out of undergrad was on the first longitudinal study of children with ADHD….” she replied “oh, the MTA Study.” Bam. Conversation for an entire hour. And it brought up so many memories.

That first longitudinal study, cohort 2, was also my husband’s first job. I actually trained him and handed him his biweekly paychecks in the summer of 1996.

That study ended up being my job for almost a decade even though it was only supposed to be a 6 month job. The pay was terrible ($6.92/hr) but it got me a graduate school recommendation letter from THE Keith Conners. Our offices were even side by side at one point in my tenure, granted his had the amazing view of downtown Durham and was three times the size of my space.

That study led me to my dissertation research and focus – developing and evaluating an academic support skills curriculum for adolescents with ADHD. And for folks who like acronyms like I do, the fact that it would be the ASS Curriculum haunted me…. it ended up being Skills for Academic Success (SAS) for fellow acronym lovers who are curious.

That study taught me a lot about family dynamics. I will never forget getting to the end of the parent training portion of the summer treatment program, and all parents had established a token economy at home and were seeing amazing results. Then came hurricane Fran. All those token economies fell by the wayside, and 20 something, eager to save the world Kristan was so disappointed that they would let a tiny thing like a natural disaster ruin all the work that we had done. 50 something Kristan is a bit more understanding.

That study gave me friendships I still have today. So all in all, a good party conversation starter and a pretty amazing first job.

• lifeinmiddleage