<p>@bogibogi - thanks!!</p>
<p>Too funny, alh.
Folks, Iâve been around a long while and have no idea what xiggiâs relationship with science is. I donât even know whether to say he or she. Not asking anyone to spill details that only xiggi should.</p>
<p>I donât mean to sound like the stickler here, and being a cheerleader and going on to MIT/Harvard is great, but why oh why, when we talk about accomplished, multi-faceted women, does it (seem to) always need to make some reference to the girly girl stuff? Like, âShe runs the company and look, she managed to get married.â Or, âand decorates cookies for parties.â </p>
<p>I know some wonât get what I mean, but maybe someone who does can phrase it better. I was thinking of role models accomplished in various ways, who got excited, overcame the challenges and dogged on- and can (and do) encourage. Young enough for hs girls, in an era high on social media, short hands, visual imagery, with increasing pressures, etc, to see as inspiring. Mollie isnât inspiring because she grew from cheerleader- itâs for what she is, has been and will continue to evolve toward.</p>
<p>Anyone know what I mean? I do know cheerleading is considered by many to be a sport and that menâs histories often refer to sports. And that you may think Iâm nuts. But Iâm not going to go into a hs and say, look, she started as a cheerleader. </p>
<p>@lookingforward - I know what you mean, and you are right about this. Itâs the âsmart vs. prettyâ socially-expected dichotomy. Iâm guilty of it too, I recognize, in my examples I suggested. Iâm sorry.</p>
<p>We should be more gender-fair. If a boy would have things like âplays pianoâ to round out his math, then itâs obnoxious of me to have said that a girl is in a beauty contest. It just shows that we all have to fight these tendencies!!</p>
<p>xiggi has provided very generous SAT prep advice to students on this board who might otherwise not have access to that information. IMHO that is modeling on several levels, including the kindness level.</p>
<p>It has been a while since I considered âgirlyâ gender specific. I like the idea girls or boys with girly tendencies wonât be ostracized in traditionally ânon-girlyâ fields.</p>
<p>I really am done for the day now, and actually leaving my house to see if the Sept Vogue is on the stands yet. A male friend has requested it as soon as Iâm done. He decorates cookies for his parties and while heâs not a scientist, he is part of a traditionally male dominated profession.</p>
<p>: ) bye</p>
<p>adding: Dare Me Megan Abbott
wow - talk about an exploration of the idea of girly and cheerleading!</p>
<p>:)
Iâm into decorating mags/sites and had to go cold turkey on an addiction to kitchen design mags, tho I canât resist online pics. </p>
<p>Miss MA is okay. </p>
<p>Yes, I understand your point in #1081, lookingforward. Itâs sort of like the headline 'San Diego grandmother wins Nobel Prize" when Maria Goeppert-Mayer won. (Actual headline.)</p>
<p>xiggi is a male who started as a novice college applicant when CC first started but started imparting SAT wisdom even when he was an applicant himself. He learnt a great deal during his application process from the wisdom of some of the elders around here back then and found out that UT was not his only choice for college although I suspect he secretly regrets not attending UT and had to settle for a top LAC instead (those elders really misled him :D). and went on to a top grad school and so on. Along the way, he has helped many on CC with figuring out not only their SAT issues but also college applications, choices etc. </p>
<p>FWIW, young males need role models too. And role models donât all need to be STEM.</p>
<p>My grandmother was an architect who studied at MIT. It certainly made me aware of architecture as a possibility and sheâs probably the only woman architect I knew of in high school, but unfortunately she died before I was born. My grandfather was also an architect and he always gets credit for being the architect of houses that various people in my family own, but Iâve always wondered if she had a role in some of them. Unfortunately they graduated into the depression so they donât have as many buildings as others might. (Though apparently my grandfather is responsible for a lot of the bridge decoration on the Merritt Parkway in CT, he also spent time writing poems about science.)</p>
<p><a href=âThough%20apparently%20my%20grandfather%20is%20responsible%20for%20a%20lot%20of%20the%20bridge%20decoration%20on%20the%20Merritt%20Parkway%20in%20CT,%20he%20also%20spent%20time%20writing%20poems%20about%20science.â>quote</a>
[/quote]
Thatâs cool. We were just on the Merritt last Friday ⊠and made the same comment we make every time we travel it ⊠this is such a beautiful road; both the scenery and the design. Kudos to GrandPa!</p>
<p>texaspg, I just mention STEM because it is what I know. I am a dilettante at literature and an ignoramus with respect to many other fields. Actually, I know relatively little about engineering or technology, for that matter. I would be interested in reading about role models in other areas.</p>
<p>I think it is very helpful to have role models at the next âstageâ of education/career + a few stages up, especially for people who are currently among a demographic minority in their fields of interest.</p>
<p>For young women in high school who are interested in STEM, in most fields there is not a shortage of potential role models among undergraduate majors in that area. For families that live near a college, if their daughters would like undergraduate role models, there are probably meetings of the campus groups of American Women in Science (AWiS) and Women in Engineering (WiE). The schedules for these meetings may appear on the university web site. There are also student groups that wax and wane in membership, but might be active, such as the Society of Physics Students. </p>
<p>If a high-school student is interested in participating in a research project at the college, that is a good way to meet role models among undergraduates and also among the grad students and post-docs who are in the same lab or broader group. There are also summer research programs for high school students, that place them in university labs. High school students who take college classes at the college have another route to identify role models who are just a bit older. </p>
<p>There are often poster sessions at colleges, covering research being done by students there, and they are generally open to visitors. National professional societies also have poster sessions at their meetings, usually. If the family lives in a large city where the meetings are held, or can arrange to visit one during the meeting, the high-school student could go to the poster session and talk to young people giving presentations. The student might need to pay a conference registration fee, but there are typically reduced rates for students. Sometimes videos of talks by student researchers can be linked. If the family lives close to a university, there will also be seminars given by grad students that are often open to the public.</p>
<p>The Mathematical Association of American publishes journals aimed at high-school and college mathematicians. There are student rates for MAA membership (though high-school might not be a category), and an MAA member receives notices of local and national meetings, where some of the sessions would be beneficial to students.</p>
<p>âShadowingâ is much more common among pre-meds than among pre-STEM people. I donât think there would be anything to see when âshadowingâ a mathematician, other than a lot of pencil gnawing and wadded up papers being thrown in the waste-paper basket, plus furious scribbling while the mathematician probably wishes the student werenât interrupting his/her concentration by breathing so loud. Some lab environments arenât conducive to shadowing eitherâbut some might be, and an email to a faculty member working in a field of interest could be a first step to productive shadowing, and perhaps research participation later on.</p>
<p>Later on, I will have some suggestions for women who are STEM undergrads or further along, to identify possible role models.</p>
<p>My grandmother, born in 1902, was the 12th of 13 kids. She was called âBabeâ until age 6, at which point her mom died and they gave her her motherâs name. She was the only child to go to college. After getting her BS in chemistry at Hardin Simmons, she worked on her MS at UT-Austin in the late '20s. Then she met my grandfather and quit school! She evetually become a high school math teacher.</p>
<p>She was one of my main role models - if she could do it in the 20s, I could do it in the 80s!</p>
<p>Despite having non-practicing engineer parents who could be role models from the paleolithic era, D went to college where she was being brainwashed that it might be too hard (I suspect there is some male chauvinism was involved) while at the same time being recruited by a top notch female physicist to major in Engineering Physics. I am glad she is overcoming this brainwashing to stick it out.</p>
<p>Here is a recent list of current female engineers in tech. Some have doctorates, one was also awarded a MacArthur.
<a href=â22 Powerful Women Engineers in Techâ>22 Powerful Women Engineers in Tech;
<p>I missed most of the earlier conversation about female role models in the sciences, but I wanted to jump in to say that there certainly are plenty of them available if one does just a little looking. My D attends an all-girls school and one of the 7th grade science projects is to choose a female scientist with whom to correspond from a supplied list. Part of the assignment is to do enough research about the scientistâs field to ask intelligent questions. My D ended up writing with a Scripps oceanographer who was very generous with her time. Other kids wrote to NIH researchers, faculty at leading universities, NASA scientists, physicians, chemists, and engineers among others. My now 13 year old D spent part of this summer at a residential oceanology camp. She canât wait to go back next summer.</p>
<p>To return to an earlier point re. Marie Curie, I think we do our girls a disservice when we give them the same old tired list of 6 or 7 scientists as inspiration. While these people may have been great thinkers who made tremendous contributions, when we fail to give girls broad, modern lists we give them the impression that women working in science are a rarity.</p>
<p>I pity anybody who reads through this thread looking for little-known tips for getting in.</p>
<p>LOL Hunt. Ahh how threads twist and turn and get hijacked.</p>
<p>Pity anyone who takes the original post at its word.
Like the diversion into top-notch women- I will be looking into some of them myself.
Off to work.</p>
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<p>Arenât we in the section of essay writing and what role models to look for when writing about the person they admire most? Apparently this is the worst ever essay topic to attempt because they end up making it all about the admired person and nothing about what they gained from the other person. :p</p>
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<p>I leave this thread for a while and come back to ⊠that! </p>
<p>Not sure what fueled that discussion, but I have to admit that TPGâs analysis is correct. I think my very first post on CC was to discuss how relevant UTâs Honors colleges were. The misleading advice came in the form of a nice Dad -TheDad if you wonder-- telling me that was more culture in a jar of Dannon than in the entire State of Texas. To which I countered with a ASUâs Barrett is nice! And I will spare you the details of his analysis of Arizonaâs academics or Business degrees in general.</p>
<p>Despite what some of the State Public Flagships Fanboys might think, I would have indeed been ecstatic to attend our beloved UT at Austin as it is a great school in a great city and it is full of Texans! What is there not to like, except that the days of Vince Young are not about to come back anytime soon. Yet, in the end I did have a choice to make and, presented with the same choices today, I would repeat the same adventure if given the opportunity. My decade in South and North California has been a blissful experience. And enough to stay away from my homebase, and THAT says a lot of about studying, living, and working in California in this century. </p>
<p>As far as role model, I believe that such role is reserved to our real life and not applicable to a discussion forum. The beauty of a forum such as this one is that we are all equalized by our pixelized personality. It is not about how much we have or how much we know, but all about how much we are willing to share. And how much we are prepared to learn from opinions and positions that differ from our own. </p>
<p>@texaspg. I threw in Elizabeth Holmes (originally from Houston) for those girls who needed someone to look up to that truly created a company on her own (self-made) rather than some of the women who became executives/managers of major tech companies that were founded by menâŠand she will become a household name very soonâŠ</p>