“that’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt” - Augustus Waters
“And finally, just when you think you’ll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it.” - Stephen Chbosky
I’m at FIRST FRC Robotics Competition. So much fun. For those who don’t know FIRST Robotics I would say google it and find a team to join. It’s an amazing program for inspiration and recognition in science and technology. But yes of course - robots? Me Gusta.
Girls in STEM
It’s not a secret that women (and pretty much any minority group) have uphill battle after uphill battle facing them when it comes to succeeding in math, science and engineering fields. Some of these are explicit (like the tilted playing field of the tenure system, which could take 100 years to level out), and some are more obscured (like the quiet social pressures that push them away from science). But what is clear is that it does not have to be the case.
I was really struck by this infographic’s ability to capture how quickly and precipitously women drop out of many fields of science once social pressures begin to take over.
I hope that projects like ScienceCheerleader, IAmScience, DoubleXScience and This Is What A Scientist Looks Like (<- bonus points if you can find me on that one) can continue to make this image a relic of the past and not a picture of the future.
(ᔥ EngineeringDegree.net, click here for enlargification)
A confocal view of cells expressing heat shock proteins that are localized to intermediate filaments.
Image by Dr. Alan R. Prescott, University of Dundee.
