The twelve years she spent teaching high school mathematics and doing statistical work for the BIA were not wasted — she was learning, developing her analytical instincts, building the statistical foundations that would complement her later aerospace work.

But they were years in which the most demanding mathematics she might have been doing was being done by other people, often less prepared for it, often producing less good results.

She earned her professional engineering license in 1949 — seven years after she joined Lockheed.

The seven years between 1942 and 1949 were years in which she was doing engineering work without the formal license, years in which her status in the organizational hierarchy was determined partly by a credentialing structure that had not been designed to include her.

The license was not magic — it did not change what she was capable of — but it changed what she was formally recognized as being capable of.