"I really came out of high school believing I wasn't bright enough to be a doctor."

The NYT article "Miers Known as a Hard-Working Advocate for the President," recounts some of the difficulties Miers had getting started in her career, such as not being able to find a job after graduating at the top of her law school class. This resonated with me:

"I really came out of high school believing I wasn't bright enough to be a doctor," Ms. Miers told The Dallas Morning News in 1991. "Career days at high school, you just got no encouragement.

Maybe you younger people today have trouble getting your mind around that, but, trust me, women growing up in the 50s and 60s were not encouraged to take on careers. I graduated at the top of my high school class in 1969 and yet no teacher ever encouraged me to pursue a career of any kind. I believed law and medicine were out of my reach, meant for a completely different sort of person. I remember meeting a female law student when I was in college -- that is, art school -- and thinking of her as incredibly strange and wondering how she got the idea that she could go to law school. It wasn't until I was four years beyond college that I formed the thought that I could have gone to law school. And, by the way, in art school, the male students were treated as if they were the ones to be taken seriously, though I must say one art teacher gave me a serious piece of economic advice: If I was moving to NYC, I would need a "sugar daddy" and he had some phone numbers to share.

How did Miers get the idea to go to law school? She was impressed by the lawyer who dealt with her family's financial affairs after her father had a stroke.

Also:

Miers goes out on the town with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman.

The NYT choose a fabulous photo of Harriet Miers to illustrate its article.