I read a great article on GOOD yesterday about how the best ways to get girls into STEM (that’s science, technology, engineering, and math) is through after school programs. It’s in reaction to the claim that schools aren’t teaching science, in favor of preparing kids for standardized tests. I get this, and even my most memorable science moments from K-12 was all through extracurricular activities: after-school visits to the science lab in elementary school, science club and Science Olympiad in high school.
This is pretty much the reason I’ve been thinking hard about applying for Teach For America this year. In particular because I want to teach science. I want to inspire kids to think about careers in science. Science tends to get a bad rap in elementary school, and it wasn’t even until college that I realized that science professors could also be cool interesting people. I went through this huge beatnik phase in high school, and I was very impressed that one of my dad’s colleague’s had met Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg! Instant cool.
So this may be totally naive, but I would love to get at least one kid to realize that being nerdy is kind of cool. Reclaim the name, and all that. But I would also love to teach kids what it took me so long to realize, and what I’m learning now every day. That science is this this cool blend of logic and discovery. Communication and introspection. It’s a great subject/field because you really have the power to make it what you want. You can work with your hands, you can work with numbers, you get to write, you get to read. Every day you get to learn something. I want to teach someone that. I want to show someone how creative science can be.
My next question, and this comes as me being, 24 years old, biology major, deciding between TFA or grad school in biology or biostats, is teaching middle school the best place to be? From the original article, despite inspiring girls at the elementary-middle-high school level, fewer than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering, and math jobs are held by women. Anecdotal evidence from my college career: if you were a dude looking for a girlfriend, the best place to be would be any biology class on campus. Women outnumber men in the sciences from undergrad to postdocs, and then it drops. Completely.
It’s not rocket science why. (Ha, more like social science.) It’s actually one of the reasons that I’m thinking about Teach for America, instead of grad school. I have a kid. And I want a career that’s conducive to having a kid. I love science. I love working in lab. I love thinking about things outside of work, reading journals and applying what I’ve learned to my own research. I love presenting, I’ve only been to one conference, but I did a poster and I loved it. But, and this is nothing new, I love making dinner. (I think I like cooking for a lot of the same reasons I like science.) I love hanging out with my kid. I love hanging out with my kid and not thinking about work. As a technician now, it’s nice to leave work at work sometimes. I’m not worried about grants or getting tenure.
I’m thinking of moving out of science. Because right now I don’t have a ton of role models. On the floor I work on, 80% of the PIs are male. (My very scientific study of walking around the labs concluded this. I didn’t include PIs without labs.) So my question is, if I want to inspire young women to pursue science, do I work my butt off to get through grad school, get a post doc, get a faculty position, (ha. ha. ha. notice how I have automatically assumed that I am smart and awesome enough to achieve all these things BRIEF SUSPENSION OF REALITY) and rock all of that toting a daughter and a successful relationship with a partner? Because the women I do know that are doing this are amazingly awesome and talented people. And I wish I knew more of them.
I’m posing the question here. What do we, as women in science, need more of? Is it inspiring young people to think more about science, and where that can take them? Or is it a step after that? And do we rely on the slow policy change of academic institutions to hire more women faculty? Or do we take that burden upon ourselves and become super heroes?
This is pretty much the reason I’ve been thinking hard about applying for Teach For America this year. In particular because I want to teach science. I want to inspire kids to think about careers in science. Science tends to get a bad rap in elementary school, and it wasn’t even until college that I realized that science professors could also be cool interesting people. I went through this huge beatnik phase in high school, and I was very impressed that one of my dad’s colleague’s had met Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg! Instant cool.
So this may be totally naive, but I would love to get at least one kid to realize that being nerdy is kind of cool. Reclaim the name, and all that. But I would also love to teach kids what it took me so long to realize, and what I’m learning now every day. That science is this this cool blend of logic and discovery. Communication and introspection. It’s a great subject/field because you really have the power to make it what you want. You can work with your hands, you can work with numbers, you get to write, you get to read. Every day you get to learn something. I want to teach someone that. I want to show someone how creative science can be.
My next question, and this comes as me being, 24 years old, biology major, deciding between TFA or grad school in biology or biostats, is teaching middle school the best place to be? From the original article, despite inspiring girls at the elementary-middle-high school level, fewer than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering, and math jobs are held by women. Anecdotal evidence from my college career: if you were a dude looking for a girlfriend, the best place to be would be any biology class on campus. Women outnumber men in the sciences from undergrad to postdocs, and then it drops. Completely.
It’s not rocket science why. (Ha, more like social science.) It’s actually one of the reasons that I’m thinking about Teach for America, instead of grad school. I have a kid. And I want a career that’s conducive to having a kid. I love science. I love working in lab. I love thinking about things outside of work, reading journals and applying what I’ve learned to my own research. I love presenting, I’ve only been to one conference, but I did a poster and I loved it. But, and this is nothing new, I love making dinner. (I think I like cooking for a lot of the same reasons I like science.) I love hanging out with my kid. I love hanging out with my kid and not thinking about work. As a technician now, it’s nice to leave work at work sometimes. I’m not worried about grants or getting tenure.
I’m thinking of moving out of science. Because right now I don’t have a ton of role models. On the floor I work on, 80% of the PIs are male. (My very scientific study of walking around the labs concluded this. I didn’t include PIs without labs.) So my question is, if I want to inspire young women to pursue science, do I work my butt off to get through grad school, get a post doc, get a faculty position, (ha. ha. ha. notice how I have automatically assumed that I am smart and awesome enough to achieve all these things BRIEF SUSPENSION OF REALITY) and rock all of that toting a daughter and a successful relationship with a partner? Because the women I do know that are doing this are amazingly awesome and talented people. And I wish I knew more of them.
I’m posing the question here. What do we, as women in science, need more of? Is it inspiring young people to think more about science, and where that can take them? Or is it a step after that? And do we rely on the slow policy change of academic institutions to hire more women faculty? Or do we take that burden upon ourselves and become super heroes?
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