(February 11, 2019 at 3:16 pm)Divinity Wrote: Not a lot of women join careers in STEM Fields. But that's changing! And it's something worth celebrating. My oldest granddaughter is pursuing a STEM Field (namely, physics) and I couldn't be more proud. Girls should be encouraged to go into scientific and mathematics fields. Especially since so few are there. I didn't even know this WAS a day until I got a text from my granddaughter. We could use more days like this. Seems a lot more important than Columbus (who 'discovered' a continent that already had people living on it) day. But then again, I suppose you can't have a "Women in Stem Sale!" so it won't get as much attention.
I have a little gathering every Halloween, and last year my niece (13) was bugging her parents to leave early because she had to get home and do her math homework. Parents were dawdling over the single malt, and she became insistent: "I have to keep up my grades, so I can get into Princeton, and become an astrophysicist!"
For years I've been giving her science toys, and trying to encourage an interest in same, but this was the first inkling I'd had of this particular ambition, so I emailed her mom the next day and, turns out that yeah, she had recently developed an interest in astrophysics, and had taken to perusing science texts for her light reading.
Whoa.
So for Christmas I got her a serious telescope, a collection of books by Sagan, Hawking, and a few others (she'd already discovered Tyson), and a membership to the local planetarium. So far, she seems serious and focused, and -- damn -- she reads faster than I do.
I am quite vicariously proud of her.
--
Dr H
"So, I became an anarchist, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Dr H
"So, I became an anarchist, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
