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S06.E09: College Dropouts and the Medford Miracle


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Sheldon considers dropping out of college to focus on building his database. Also, George Sr. is frustrated when someone else gets credit for his football wins, on YOUNG SHELDON, Thursday, Jan. 5 (8:00-8:31 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+
 

 

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I'm not saying Sheldon actually should have done it, but I would have suggested him telling his parents he wanted to take a leave of absence, instead of saying he wanted to drop out of school.

I was also a little surprised that Missy never explicitly said "You want to date my Meemaw, not me" to her "boyfriend."

Edited by ItCouldBeWorse
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What a peculiar Missy storyline.  I liked the kid, he seemed like a nice person, I can see Missy liking him. And then he goes and starts dating Meemaw.  Come on, man.  Good for Missy, being decisive and dumping his ass.  And at the same time she is the one responsible for the whole situation, setting up her date at Meemaw’s.

George could have just taken the credit for the win as it was his call to do what Pastor Rob was suggesting.  But it looks like George has too much integrity for that.  And Rob should be more attuned to the fact that he is stepping on George’s toes here.  

“We want the same thing. - You want to get you out of my office too?”

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That kid did seem to genuinely miss his grandma, even if him wanting to date Missy for Meemaw was weird.

6 hours ago, jewel21 said:

I love how George didn't even react when they dumped Gatorade on his head. Not even a flinch, heh. It cracked me up. 

 

Lmao that was classic. I wonder if this is leading to a confrontation between George and Pastor Rob.

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Poor kid.  Misses his grandma.  I was surprised Missy went for the cookie baking date.  She must have really liked him.  

It's a little different now that Dr Sturgis is involved, but I wouldn't have wanted to get involved with a minor on something like that either.  If he decided to just quit halfway through they would have severely limited options in getting any of their money back unless he had an adult cosigning something.  And if I were Mary or George I wouldn't want to do that, because you just never know what Sheldon is going to do.

I thought the phone call was funny, but I also found it odd Mary didn't hang up when smeone said they were on the phone (plus when I lived with my family I never started dialling until I listened to see if anyone was on the phone, I feel like that's a TV thing).  Also, I don't really think Sheldon needed to lower his voice. He sounds like an adult, just doesn' look like one.

I felt bad for George not getting any of the credit.  After all, he was fired when the team wasn't winning, but it's apparently none of his doing when they do win.  One way or the other peeps.

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2 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

That kid did seem to genuinely miss his grandma

1 hour ago, Katy M said:

Poor kid.  Misses his grandma. 

It's funny how culture can change pretty quickly sometimes. It wasn't that long ago that viewers would just see a weirdo, but now, with mental health campaigns, many of us recognize a sad kid who hasn't processed the death of a loved one and could use some sensitivity.

Which, of course, he doesn't get from these people, who are from that time when most people didn't think of mental health like we do now. So, points for realism, I guess.

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4 hours ago, Katy M said:

 

I felt bad for George not getting any of the credit. 

I understood this (though I felt bad too), because Pastor Rob is the thing that changed, even though (as Sheldon might have pointed out), if you win about 50% of your games, 25% of the time you're going to have two losses in a row, and 25% of the time, two wins (assuming independence, which is rarely factual, but in this case, close enough for the example.)

There's also an attribution issue, where fans attribute winning or losing to whatever changed--even though, for example, both teams probably prayed.  (It's Texas, and it's football.)

 

 

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I wasn't keen on this episode.  It had a few laughs and thankfully no focus on the stupid pregnancy storyline but otherwise I felt it was pretty weak.  Mary objecting to Sheldon dropping out of college with the concern that he'd never go back was ridiculous.  This is Sheldon we're talking about.  First off at 12 (13?) he has plenty of time to go back to college and second of all it was only a year or two ago that she didn't want him going in the first place.  Sheldon missed the boat on not reminding her of that.  And then the whole Missy storyline was just sad.  Anyone could see that the poor kid missed his grandmother.  Sure it wasn't up to Missy and Meemaw to fill that void for him but it also wasn't funny either!

Edited by Elizabeth Anne
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5 hours ago, Katy M said:

I felt bad for George not getting any of the credit.  After all, he was fired when the team wasn't winning, but it's apparently none of his doing when they do win.

Exactly.  George is the one who put the work in, he's the one who came back to the job fired up to make a difference, made that difference, then Pastor Rob comes in and steals his glory.  In addition to stealing his wife....  Which, back when Mary was having her crush on Pastor Rob when she was still in the church, George didn't seem all that suspicious or jealous.  He was a little, but it didn't seem focused on Pastor Rob, just on Mary's attention wandering from him.  Now for this episode, we see George getting really angry that the pastor brought in for the team prayer was Pastor Rob, and his irritation at that seemed more personal than just "he's from the church shunning my family."  It seemed like he considered Pastor Rob to be his arch nemesis.  Now, maybe that is because of the shunning, and how much he knows that hurt/is hurting Mary, but it read much more visceral than that, as in "this is the man my wife was having an emotional affair with."

18 minutes ago, Elizabeth Anne said:

Mary objecting to Sheldon "dropping out of" college with the concern that he'd never go back was ridiculous.  This is Sheldon we're talking about.

Hmmm...  I'm not sure how ridiculous this was.  Sheldon already thinks he's smarter than his professors--smarter than everybody, in fact--so it is entirely likely that he's going to just decide he's not getting anything out of the experience and never go back.  I know people like that, who believe they're so much smarter than the world that they just go back to their parent's basements to wallow in their intelligence, whining that nobody recognizes their superiority, all while they work at a sandwich shop because high tech firms won't just hand them a high paying, corner office, influential job because they're unable to appreciate how that genius deserves that position.  Entry level work is for those less intellectually superior. 

Sometimes they write Sheldon that way, but at other times, they write him with a real Texan work ethic, and that Sheldon would go back to school--if only to check all the proper boxes before heading to the next stage in his mapped out life en route to the Nobel Prize.  I agree.  That Sheldon would never drop out and never go back.

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23 minutes ago, Elizabeth Anne said:

And then the whole Missy storyline was just sad.  Anyone could see that the poor kid missed his grandmother.  Sure it wasn't up to Missy and Meemaw to fill that void for him but it also wasn't funny either!

I agree. Using Missy to spend time Mee Maw and fill the void left by his own grandmother was wrong. If that's what he wants, he needs to find other ways to do it. Good for Missy for realizing that he wanted Mee Maw, not her. 

 

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59 minutes ago, Sarah 103 said:

 

I agree. Using Missy to spend time Mee Maw and fill the void left by his own grandmother was wrong. If that's what he wants, he needs to find other ways to do it. Good for Missy for realizing that he wanted Mee Maw, not her. 

 

Yeah but I wish that Missy and Meemaw had just pointed that out to him in a gentler way that acknowledged he missed his own grandma instead of just treating him like an annoyance they had to put up with until his parents picked him up.

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I enjoyed the break from the whole Mandy situation and more time for other characters. Missy feeling uncomfortable at having someone over at her own house was just sad. Meemaw when invited to join Missy's date should have politely declined. It was not Meemaw's movie night, it was Missy's date. 

As for Sheldon dropping out of school. Do not know about Texas, but many states you have to be 15-16 to be legally allowed to drop out. Some states requires a parents signature also.  If not social services show up to find out why a child is not attending school. 

Mary seemed more concerned about Sheldon dropping out over Georgie dropping out. Maybe if she had been more concerned with Georgie we would not have the Mandy situation. 

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17 minutes ago, Kaycee said:

As for Sheldon dropping out of school. Do not know about Texas, but many states you have to be 15-16 to be legally allowed to drop out. Some states requires a parents signature also.  If not social services show up to find out why a child is not attending school. 

But that’s regular public school, Sheldon already has a diploma for that. He’s not legally required to go to school anymore.

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Poor Missy seemed to really find a nice boy, too bad he has clearly not processed his grief over losing his grandma, I felt bad for him. A bit of a weird plot, but I am glad that Missy ended things quickly when she realized that the kid wanted to date Meemaw more than her, hopefully he finds a better way to deal with his grief besides imprinting on other peoples grandmas. 

George really cant win, he gets fired when the team isn't winning enough but when they start doing great no one wants to give him his credit. I kept waiting for it to come out that George wasn't just upset that Pastor Rob was getting the credit for his wins, but that he knew he had an emotional affair with his wife but still didn't stand up for her in the church, but I guess that was all subtext. 

George just starring without blinking as the Gatorade was thrown over him was the best joke of the episode, that was some grade A physical comedy. 

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6 hours ago, Starchild said:

It's funny how culture can change pretty quickly sometimes. It wasn't that long ago that viewers would just see a weirdo, but now, with mental health campaigns, many of us recognize a sad kid who hasn't processed the death of a loved one and could use some sensitivity.

Which, of course, he doesn't get from these people, who are from that time when most people didn't think of mental health like we do now. So, points for realism, I guess.

Thank you for explaining this, @Starchild.
Even if I wasn't seriously under the weather, and even if I hadn't kept falling asleep, I'm not sure I would have understood what the Grandma plot was about:
"a sad kid who hasn't processed the death of a loved one" was seen as a "weirdo" in the 90s in Texas
——especially a boy.
I never had any close grandparents, and I was a girl, and I had 3 daughters, so the
subtleties of this plot totally escaped me.

 

I just watched the ending that I had missed
——I loved that the Youth Pastor's play worked and that George got credit for it
——a nice resolution to George's bitterness over the opposite happening in the previous game.
It's a team sport.

  

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I liked Pastor Rob at first, but now he can take a hike. Flirting with Mary, not standing up for her when the church shunned them, and then basically taking/getting all of the credit for George Sr's team winning. He's a jackass.

This ep was hit or miss for me. I didn't enjoy Sheldon's storyline, Missy and Meemaw weren't as kind to that poor boy as they should have been (though I like Missy breaking up with him), and I was as frustrated as George with the football storyline. George being livid even as Gatorade poured over him was the highlight for me. 

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3 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

I know people like that, who believe they're so much smarter than the world that they just go back to their parent's basements to wallow in their intelligence, whining that nobody recognizes their superiority, all while they work at a sandwich shop because high tech firms won't just hand them a high paying, corner office, influential job because they're unable to appreciate how that genius deserves that position.  Entry level work is for those less intellectually superior.

You know my brother-in-law?

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3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Yeah but I wish that Missy and Meemaw had just pointed that out to him in a gentler way that acknowledged he missed his own grandma instead of just treating him like an annoyance they had to put up with until his parents picked him up.

I don't really blame Missy.  She's just a kid and she has a good reason to be perturbed with the guy, but she should have at least told him why, maybe then they could have had a conversation over it and leave off as friends if nothing else.  I do blame Meemaw for not being more adult and kind about it, but unfortunately that's the way she is.

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16 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

I don't really blame Missy.  She's just a kid and she has a good reason to be perturbed with the guy, but she should have at least told him why, maybe then they could have had a conversation over it and leave off as friends if nothing else.  I do blame Meemaw for not being more adult and kind about it, but unfortunately that's the way she is.

We didn't see the rest of their interaction.  She was going to teach him how to play rummy.  I don't know what time it was, or how much time was left, but she could have had a nice conversation with him that we didn't see.  If she wanted to be mean, or not at all kind at least, she could have kicked them back over to Missy's house.  She could have had him call his mom to get him "now."  

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I can empathize with George being upset that he wasn't getting the credit he was due (not to mention general annoyance with Pastor Rob in general), but him hoping they would lose so Rob would take the blame isn't a good look for a coach, especially one that got fired recently for losing too much and only recently rehired. Take the win. Be happy. 

I didn't mind the Meemaw/Missy storyline. Meemaw laying down the laws for the date was fun, as was her confusion and annoyance to being included. 

I was glad to get a break from the pregnancy and gambling hall story lines. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but they built up temptation/alcoholism/unemployed storylines for awhile. and it was annoying to see them abandon them.

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9 minutes ago, Tattooeddancer said:

I was glad to get a break from the pregnancy and gambling hall story lines. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but they built up temptation/alcoholism/unemployed storylines for awhile. and it was annoying to see them abandon them.

I agree with you here.  I wish they'd never gone down that pregnancy storyline road it's totally against anything we knew about the Cooper family from BBT, but ok, I can give that a pass, but what it also is doing is shifting the focus from the other storylines that they seemed to have spent some time creating (and which actually is part of Cooper family canon) especially the will he cheat/won't he cheat with George. 

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4 hours ago, Katy M said:

We didn't see the rest of their interaction.  She was going to teach him how to play rummy.  I don't know what time it was, or how much time was left, but she could have had a nice conversation with him that we didn't see.  If she wanted to be mean, or not at all kind at least, she could have kicked them back over to Missy's house.  She could have had him call his mom to get him "now."  

I'm a firm believer that a TV show would show us something that significant if that's the point it wanted to make.  But it didn't, so I'm left to believe that such a conversation never happened.  If the show wanted us to think so it would have given us some indication that it was going to happen, but it didn't.  All it would have taken is for Meemaw to pull the kid aside and say, "Now, son", and they could have left it at that for us to figure out.  But no such setup happened.  So while I didn't think the show made her look mean, it also didn't make her look that nice either.  But that's Meemaw!

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A bit confused about Missy's date.
(1) Since the boy missed his grandma so much, Meemaw could have suggested he volunteer at a senior center.
(2) He said his mom would come get him at 7 PM. Doesn't the family eat supper at 6? If the invitation included a meal, no one mentioned it.
(3) "Breaking up"? AIUI, couples who break up have been in a committed exclusive relationship. For a pair of 13(?) year olds who have had a few supervised dates, shouldn't "don't call me again" be plenty? Maybe things have changed a lot since I was a teenager.

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4 hours ago, Driad said:

A bit confused about Missy's date.
(1) Since the boy missed his grandma so much, Meemaw could have suggested he volunteer at a senior center

I didn’t get it either until I read @Starchild’s comment upthread explaining that it was taboo in the 90s to talk about such feelings. 
I would add, probably doubly taboo for a boy and especially in Texas.

 

4 hours ago, Driad said:

(3) "Breaking up"? AIUI, couples who break up have been in a committed exclusive relationship. For a pair of 13(?) year olds who have had a few supervised dates, shouldn't "don't call me again" be plenty? Maybe things have changed a lot since I was a teenager.

The “breaking up” remark reminded me of when one of my kids was in middle school in the 90s and remarked about 2 classmates “going out” with each other.
I asked where do they go? 
It turned out “going out” meant walking around together on the playground at recess.

In hindsight, I regret that I got so distracted by the lingo that I failed to further develop the moment of child-to-parent sharing.

Perhaps Meemaw was similarly too non-plussed by Missy’s friend’s desire to spend time with a grandma to be able to have a conversation with him.

Edited by shapeshifter
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5 hours ago, shapeshifter said:
8 hours ago, Driad said:

A bit confused about Missy's date.
(1) Since the boy missed his grandma so much, Meemaw could have suggested he volunteer at a senior center

I didn’t get it either until I read @Starchild’s comment upthread explaining that it was taboo in the 90s to talk about such feelings. 
I would add, probably doubly taboo for a boy and especially in Texas.

 

He possibly didn’t even know himself that he had these feelings until he met Meemaw.  I mean, I’m sure he knew he missed his grandma, but it didn’t keep him from leading a normal early-teen life.  If he was a boy going around looking to, as someone upthread put it, imprint on other people’s grandmas, Missy could have probably picked up on that and would not be interested in him in the first place, even if he was trying to hide it because of the stigma.  It’s probably Meemaw in particular that brought this to the surface and made him dysfunctional.  I don’t mean it disparagingly, only that his life suffers because of it.

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The kid didn't know what he was doing, Missy couldn't really tell it was weird until the cookie baking, and Memaw wasn't really paying attention. 

Expecting a couple of tweens 30 years ago to recognize an unresolved emotional loss of a grandparent is ridiculous.  The writers got most of it right.

Kids back then didn't really "date" before they even hit high school, especially not in conservative Christian Texas.  Missy's experience with boys was her family, her baseball team & a few random neighbors.  No way she could foresee what that kid's deal was.  

And Memaw should have just driven him home.  I thought she was going to say "Let me get my keys", not "Let me get the cards".  That was the wrong move.  He shouldn't have stayed. 

Edited by leighdear
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This episode touched on something that I've long noticed on TV shows.  The disposable grandparent.  On sitcoms this is all too often played for laughs.  Someone trotting out the conveniently just died grandmother to get out of a social committment for instance.  At least here they did acknowledge that someone can miss their grandmother for longer than 5 minutes!

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On 1/6/2023 at 7:20 AM, Katy M said:

It's a little different now that Dr Sturgis is involved, but I wouldn't have wanted to get involved with a minor on something like that either.  If he decided to just quit halfway through they would have severely limited options in getting any of their money back unless he had an adult cosigning something.

"Something like that" continues to irk. No one expects perfect adherence to complex legal issues from a sitcom. Even legal procedurals take much license from the truth and repackage, contort and conflate legal issues to tell a better story (or because writers are just too lazy to get it right). Nevertheless, I had hoped this ridiculously-insulting "invention" plot thread from the previous episode would have been a one-episode unfortunate detour. Not so much apparently, and this now seems to be a multiple-episode story arc.  "Let's index grant requests and make that index searchable on computer" is not an invention, and more specifically, would not qualify for a patent. No reasonably-knowledgeable person about patents would think otherwise. The information conveyed to us, and apparently the characters on the show, satisfied none of the requirements for a patent. Everyone acting like Sheldon's "idea" does qualify for a patent, and indeed is the best "invention" since the light bulb, is insulting to those who do know something about patents. That investors would take a meeting to discuss this "invention" is further preposterous, before even reaching the point that the "inventor" here is 12 years old. There's a limit to how much nonsense a viewer can take.

Yes, the completed index and searching software code could be copyrighted. But that work has yet to be done, so there's nothing to "protect" at this point. And without having a patent, nothing prevents anyone else from doing exactly the same thing and practicing very the same "idea" notwithstanding any copyright issues. (Even if "Romeo & Juliet" were still subject to a copyright, nothing would prevent "Westside Story" from being produced even thought it is essentially the same "story" being retold). This "idea" is essentially worthless because anyone could copy the "idea" - even if they could not copy the prospective index itself or the software that would search that index. 

 

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They specifically said they wanted Sheldon to work fast so no one else did it before they launched, so I think they realize that the idea for the project is easily copied.

I'm surprised the university hasn't just put some grad student on it, undercutting Sheldon completely... or really they could assign the task to anyone; doesn't have to be a grad student.

Edited by possibilities
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7 minutes ago, possibilities said:

They specifically said they wanted Sheldon to work fast so no one else did it before they launched

Why would that matter? It not as though there's a pot of gold waiting for the first one to execute this nebulous "idea?"

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21 minutes ago, possibilities said:

They specifically said they wanted Sheldon to work fast so no one else did it before they launched, so I think they realize that the idea for the project is easily copied.

I'm surprised the university hasn't just put some grad student on it, undercutting Sheldon completely... or really they could assign the task to anyone; doesn't have to be a grad student.

They seem to value Sheldon enough that they don't want him to take his marbles and go home, so . . . 😉

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13 minutes ago, ahpny said:

Why would that matter? It not as though there's a pot of gold waiting for the first one to execute this nebulous "idea?"

Perhaps the writers are imagining this being like Google or Alta Vista, but the writers don't realize that search engines were monetized by ads?
Or:
Maybe the writers are actually thinking of Cornell's https://arxiv.org/ or Google Scholar's patent search, and going to have the database turn out to be free in the end (the college admins just don't grasp that yet), but perhaps give the college some cachet in the scientific community?

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2 hours ago, ahpny said:

Why would that matter? It not as though there's a pot of gold waiting for the first one to execute this nebulous "idea?"

They certainly seem to think there is - the Dave Foley character wouldn't be involved, despite his love of "science" if he didn't see dollar signs attached to this idea.  I wonder if this is an accurate reflection of the time it was set and people then did assume that creating databases would bring big bucks?  I know when I was working as a librarian in the '90s our library paid, sometimes significant amounts of money, to access a lof stuff that is likely freely available now.  People then didn't have crystal balls so it's not unreasonable to assume they would have expected to make money from these ideas.

Edited by Elizabeth Anne
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47 minutes ago, Elizabeth Anne said:
3 hours ago, ahpny said:

Why would that matter? It not as though there's a pot of gold waiting for the first one to execute this nebulous "idea?"

They certainly seem to think there is

That's precisely the problem. There isn't, never was, nor should there have been any reasonable expectation that this "idea" was either major breakthrough and/or something that would make anyone rich. Thus, this entire plot arc is incredible and insulting. The attitude of all who see great fortune and wonder in a mere suggestion to index stuff is brazenly stupid. While there would be great fortunes and much science emanating from better ways to search mountains of data (the origin story of Google), the magic (and potential patentable material) is in the algorithm and manner to do this better, not simply the idea to do it at all. Nothing we've seen so far establishes that Sheldon came up with a better algorithm or improved way to search for anything. Merely putting stuff on a computer is not a patentable way to do something.

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On 1/6/2023 at 5:50 AM, bad things are bad said:

Sheldon storyline...meh

Definitely.  The show is kind of going down hill with this plot, the pregnancy plot (along with Mary's leaving the church) and the unresolved casino plot.  All things I'm not interested in.

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At the pitch meeting, Dr. Sturgis said "We will make money from both sides."  Meaning the university offering the grant would pay money to Sheldon for the privilege of uploading the grant.  Then the student would pay money to Sheldon for the privilege of searching the grant database.

If you didn't understand the idea of open source, this would strike you as a good business model.  I think that is why everybody thought they would get rich.

 

By the way, nice touch having Sheldon approach Texas Instruments!

 

image.png.ef76d2a4ebd35d66ece81d84558e1b9b.png

 

Edited by TheLastKidPicked
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On 1/6/2023 at 12:42 PM, Elizabeth Anne said:

I wasn't keen on this episode.  It had a few laughs and thankfully no focus on the stupid pregnancy storyline but otherwise I felt it was pretty weak.  Mary objecting to Sheldon dropping out of college with the concern that he'd never go back was ridiculous.  This is Sheldon we're talking about.  First off at 12 (13?) he has plenty of time to go back to college and second of all it was only a year or two ago that she didn't want him going in the first place.  Sheldon missed the boat on not reminding her of that.  And then the whole Missy storyline was just sad.  Anyone could see that the poor kid missed his grandmother.  Sure it wasn't up to Missy and Meemaw to fill that void for him but it also wasn't funny either!

Yeah, it would have been nice if Meemaw stepped in to talk to comfort the poor kid but this is Meemaw we are talking about. 

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