Question: "Picture yourself at 17, walking through Boston - what route did you take to school? What did you see, hear, smell along the way?"

Every morning I'd leave our triple-decker in Dorchester at 7:15 sharp, my plaid uniform skirt swishing against my knees. The walk to St. Catherine's took me past Murphy's Bakery where the smell of Irish soda bread mixed with exhaust fumes from the morning buses. I'd pass the older boys from Southie heading to the public school, whistling and joking, while I clutched my Latin textbook tighter. The church bells at St. Margaret's marked 7:30, and I'd quicken my pace, my saddle shoes clicking on the wet pavement. By the time I reached the school's iron gates, my fingers were numb from the October cold, but my heart was warm thinking about Sister Mary Francis's literature class. Those morning walks taught me that education was worth any discomfort, any distance.

Question: "Who was your crew - the people you could talk with until dawn? Where was your spot, and what made those friendships feel like they'd last forever?"
We called ourselves "Les Princes de la Nuit" - the Princes of the Night - five boys who worked in different bakeries across Lyon. After our shifts ended at noon, we'd meet at Café de la Paix by the Rhône, still dusty with flour, drinking wine and arguing about everything - football, politics, whose baguette had the best crust. Michel wanted to be a chef, Antoine dreamed of Paris, but Bernard and I, we knew we'd never leave Lyon. Summer evenings, we'd sit by the river until 3 AM, then walk back to our respective bakeries to start another day. We swore we'd open a bakery together one day, revolutionize French bread. Michel died in a car accident at 23, Antoine did make it to Paris. Bernard and I kept meeting at the same café every Sunday for fifty years, until his heart gave out last spring. Those friendships felt eternal because we shared the same flour under our fingernails, the same exhaustion, the same dreams rising like dough in the dark.

Question: "Tell me about a moment when you discovered something important about yourself, life, or someone you love - an instant of clarity."

It was 1978, my second year at Technical University, and Professor Krueger had just told me - again - that computer science was "unsuitable for women." I stood in the empty computer lab at midnight, the punch cards for my program scattered across the floor where I'd thrown them in frustration. Then I looked at the machine, really looked at it. It didn't care that I was a woman. It only cared if my logic was correct. I gathered my cards, fed them through again, and watched my program run perfectly - a algorithm that sorted data faster than anything my male classmates had produced. That moment, alone with the humming machines, I understood: I didn't need anyone's permission to be brilliant. The computer's green screen reflected in my glasses, and I saw myself clearly - not as the girl they said didn't belong, but as the engineer who would prove them all wrong. I never looked back.