“So, where did you work before Trendsetters?” he asked, handing her a granola bar. Because she wasn’t a subject, the dossier on Samiah had been pretty high level, covering her academic background and the various roles she’d held at the company, but he didn’t have anything on her career prior to Trendsetters.

“I worked for one of the other tech companies in the city right after grad school, but that lasted less than a year. I started at Trendsetters three years ago.” She held her hands up. “And I know what you’re thinking. ‘It took you that long to finish grad school?’”

“Hey, I understand. Grad school is no joke.”

“Actually, I went to summer school and carried a full workload so that I could finish a semester early, but that’s only because I got a late start. I earned a degree in education before I found the courage to tell my family that I didn’t want to follow in my parents’ footsteps.”

He stopped in the middle of tearing the wrapper from his bar. “You were going to be a teacher?”

She shook her head, but took a sip from the plastic water bottle that had been strapped to her hiking belt before answering. “No, I was never going to be a teacher,” she said.

After it became obvious that she had no plans to elaborate, Daniel asked, “So why…?”

She lifted a long, spindly branch from the ground and began drawing curlicues in the soft earth.

“Even as I sat in all those early childhood education classes, I knew I wasn’t going to teach. I’ve known that I wanted to work in the tech industry—and not just as a computer science teacher—since high school.” She released a sigh. “But I didn’t want to disappoint my mom and dad. They were both teachers. My sister is a teacher who went ahead and married a teacher. Education is a big deal in my family.”

“I get that,” he said. Pursuing higher education and military service were a given in his family.

“Anyway, I stuck with it so that I’d have the degree. My dad has this saying: The world will always need teachers and nurses, so as long as you have a degree in either of those fields, you’ll always have a job.”

“Nursing?”

“Hard pass. The sight of blood makes me queasy.” She tilted her head. “Come to think of it, I have the same reaction at the thought of teaching a bunch of fourth graders.”

Daniel shook in an exaggerated shudder, drawing a laugh from her.

“So, you went through four years of undergrad, got your degree in education, and then did it all over again to earn the software engineering degree?”