Science Ate My Brain, But I Have a Theory About That

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Trolling the Twitter feed this morning I found this tweeted by Feminist.com:

Q from audience. What can we do to encourage girls to pursue science careers? A: Change their perception of science

Uh, no, how about making science more interesting? I don’t buy into the argument that girls are “kept out” of science because they don’t see other girls interested in careers in science. I think, and everyone get their umbrage spatter glasses on, that some girls just find science boring as hell. I did and so did a lot of my friends, including guys. Oh not all science was boring. I found physical geography, earth science, and meteorology interesting, food science was fun and you got to eat the results, but anything that I had to learn statistics or geometry or physics for on a higher level than measuring cups? Forget it. My brain didn’t work that way. I’m an English major. I deal in story theory, literary tropes, and composition, not in facts. In fact, much like some of Alice’s friends in Wonderland, I can’t hold more than a few mathematical or scientific facts in my brain at one time. There’s just more interesting things out there. I found Algebra interesting in college but failed it in High School (ahem, this might have something to do with my other interests in high school… er.. boys). Algebra was interesting until we got into logarithms or matrices. Bleck. Math theory? BORING! English theory?? Hooray!!

No, I don’t believe girls are kept back from science. Girls keep themselves from science because some of us just aren’t interested. I also think we think differently because, and here’s a concept, we are different.  No one will ever convince me that the female brain is the same as the male brain because, and I am officially giving up my feminist “license” on this one, of one difference; hormones. Hormones are why there are effeminate men and masculine women. Testosterone and estrogen and the amounts that each of us are born with pretty much determine how we present ourselves in society and much of our likes and dislikes. I don’t know why this is so, but it is and I’ve lived long enough to observe some facts about that myself. Does that mean that women cannot do science? Lord, no! It means that some of us are so wired that science as a career sounds as boring as being an accountant (believe it or not I started to be an accounting major, but found it… surprise…very boring). I couldn’t imagine doing science or accounting for a living. So, no, I don’t think we can push the sexes to be other than they are, interested in their own areas of knowledge and expertise. Some things you just can’t even out or socially engineer because you wish it so.

Related Articles

• Geek Kids : Potato Chip Science Kit (thinkgeek.com)
• Women in science blogging | Martin Robbins (guardian.co.uk)
• There’s a lot more to science than space and dinosaurs | Alice Bell (guardian.co.uk)

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Mortality and Loving Life

Today the air is sizzling around me. Do you ever have one of those days where you are totally aware of your surroundings at all times? Where you can even feel the very clothes on your skin? Everything is bristling with sensitivity and your head’s all abuzz? No, it’s not a bad sinus infection. It’s what I like to call, being totally alive right this moment. And I’m loving it. It was brought home to me recently how wonderful it is to be in your own skin right now and how needlessly we stress out over things that are completely baseless. We worry and worry and work ourselves up into a tizzy and it does nothing but send us to an early grave. I think we should all take long, long thoughtful moments during the day to just breathe it all in. The Naked Soul calls this “allowing our spirits to catch up:”

We in fact do need to allow our spirit to catch up so to speak; however the way we do this is not by doing different things that keep us busy, such as a day off or a vacation. In fact we owe it our self, to our personal well being and subsequent growth to make time for our spirit to catch up daily and to develop an awareness of the state of “busy” that we too often find ourselves in. To allow our spirit to catch up as the natives in the story prescribed themselves is not to necessarily stop the activity as much as it is to change our state of being from being busy and hurried to being at peace in who we are and what we are doing. That is we can still go through our day and at the same time not be in such a hurried state of mind to get everything done. The truth is that often when we change our state of being from being in such a hurry we actually heighten our awareness and actually get more done while in a more peaceful and relaxed state.

Well said! How many of us are actually at peace with who we are or what we are doing? Nowadays, you aren’t anybody if you’re not constantly moving, moving, moving. In the job market, you are stagnating if you don’t change jobs every 7 years. Marriages fall apart without really trying. We want things to be perfect without having to work for it. It should just BE that way. But how about if things were perfect right now? What if, as Bill Murray said in Groundhog Day, “What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today?!”

When one has a close “shave” with death, like I did almost a year and a half ago, it really puts your whole life into perspective. You realize what’s important and what isn’t. You may take more personal risks because, frankly, you may not be here tomorrow. Or you may stay risk-free to jealously guard what you have worked for. I almost wasn’t here tomorrow. (And if I’m gone tomorrow, hopefully, you faithful readers will know that something is up). But, for right now, I just want to listen to those birds outside the window this morning, feel that intense heat on my skin, and take today as it comes without worrying about this or that deadline or whether this or that person was being mean or merely careless. It’s not this and it’s not that. It just is what it is.

I Suck at Tests and Summer TV

I haven’t blogged much. I’ve decided that I really am paid what I’m worth and stopped the job hunt. Why? Because I scored a lousy 76(!!!) on a Civil Service test and am now re-thinking the “I’m-such-a-career-catch” idea. Jeez! Can you say LOSER? Can you see it imprinted on the forehead? I have never been good at tests. Long essays, research, and writing are my forte. Tests? Not so much. I barely passed the GRE to get into the Master’s program although I sailed through my college years with a 4.0 grade point average. Tests and I do not go together. I cannot do those stupid logic problems that says Johnny and Rachel and Eddie are in an apartment building. Johnny and Eddie live next door to Abigail, but Abigail is not on the same floor as Joanna. You know the ones!! Are you Freakin’ kidding me? Who gives a *%&$## about their apartment building. I HATE THEM! Vocabulary I get. Reading Comprehension I get. Math? What’s math? You get the idea.

Even though I had already decided to stay put in my current job, I still tested because I didn’t want to be a “no-show” and yes, secretly, I wanted to prove I could put myself out there again and BE WANTED! Wrong again. It’s humiliating to think that 34 people performed better on the test than I did! Now I’m bummed and spent the week watching this:

and this:

Yes, I know this one’s a ripoff of Ninja Warrior, but I couldn’t resist. I got a huge laugh out of it anyway. Watching people bounce on giant rubber balls and into the mud just never gets old!

I also spend my summer nights watching this:

I’m a TV geek what can I say?

So, I suppose there are worse things to do when you find out you’re past your prime in the work force, right?