Alabama Girls

I finished my week in Alabama, and here in a few days I'll post a wrap-up, hopefully with some pictures. I'm home tonight for a grand total of 24hrs, and I fly out to Singapore tomorrow.

My sleep schedule is so screwy now - last Sunday, I stayed up all night and left for the airport at 4:30 in the morning. During the week, my partner and I had to get up before 6 most mornings in order to get to the various schools 45min before first period. We finished up Friday by 1pm, and I was so tired I crashed on my hotel bed for a couple hours. Then I couldn't get to sleep that night, and we had to leave for the airport home by 3am, so I didn't sleep that night either. So I slept on the plane and all day today, and I'm bright-eyed now at 2:30 a.m. But hey, maybe I'm all set for Singapore time! I've managed to pre-jet lag myself!

But you know, what other time in life am I going to be able to set my own sleep schedule like this? I don't have anybody dependent on me, and as long as I get all my obligations done and am on time for all my responsibilities, I can just go to bed whenever I happen to be tired. How cool is that!

What I wanted to write on this evening is the girls we talked to this week. We talked to all the girls in grades 9-12 at eight different schools in our area of Alabama. Now, I was homeschooled, so my experience with public schools is pretty darn limited. The schools we went to varied quite a lot - we went to the biggest one in the county, a little bitty one with no white students, the one where the rich parents send their kids, and others all across the spectrum. We presented in libraries, auditoriums, band rooms, and one place on stage. The principals and teachers all seemed genuinely glad to see us, and always accommodated us with a projector and anything else we needed.

But it's the girls I am going to remember most, I think. Well, I can't possibly forget the sweet tea and BBQ, but hey:

- There was the one girl that started laughing at me when I said I liked Star Trek, giggling away in the back row. Hey now! Don't be dissin' the nerd's holy grail!

- The 10th grader who said that she wanted to grow up to cure cancer, then looked shyly away and told us nobody thinks she can do it. Oh, honey, work your behind off until you get it, and don't ever be afraid to aim high.

- We got a lot of girls asking us what ACT score or what GPA they need to be an engineer/get into college/get into World's Best School. I always answered this by saying colleges look at a lot of things besides GPA and ACT, and that it's good to be involved in other activities at well. One girl wouldn't let up until I named a score to get into World's Best School, so I picked the lowest one I thought had a shot: 26 on ACT. Now, in actuality, I think you need at minimum a 30, as well as a stellar resume from highschool. But the little girl's face just fell when she heard 26, and my heart just sank for her. I don't know if she'd already taken it and didn't get a 26, or whether that just seemed impossibly high. I tired to reassure her, but after that I never named a score again.

- In one class, there were two girls who came skipping in and sat right up in the front row. While we were waiting to start, one of the said to me - I'm so excited you are here! You are from the school I want to get into! We stayed late to talk to them afterwards, and who knows, maybe we'll see them someday! I left my email with those two, so if they ever come to visit I'm taking them around on a tour.

- That is, of course, in contrast to the places where the students had never heard of our school. Some teachers, even, didn't recognize the name. Kind of a deflation of the ego, that is. But I can't complain - when I ask international students where they went to undergradute, often they name a school elesewhere in the world I've never heard of, only to find later it's the best in their country.

- Several of the schools we went to were K-12, not just a high school. In one of these schools, I was coming back from the lunchroom when I ran across a little tiny girl wandering in the hallway. Big ol brown eyes, ponytail with bow on the top of her head. "Ma'am?" she said, "Do you know if my mommy is in the lunchroom?" She said this is the cutest southern drawl, and her little hands were just wringing in front of her. I, of course, have no idea who her mother might be, but one look at that little pink mouth and I would adopt her if she couldn't find her mother. She'd fit in my carry-on, I'm pretty sure.

- We did an activity during each presentation, where the girls build a tower that we test with weights. The testing part is always exciting, rooting for the little towers to hold up, stay!, stay!, aw, man, there it goes! One group at the school with mostly rich kids had a group of girls that didn't look happy about the activity. They were all wearing heavy makeup, dressed to the nines, all carrying little pink backpacks, and building a tower was like, so beneath them. But I swear, after a few minutes they really got into it. And when I came around with my weights, they were all squealing as I loaded up the tower, holding hands in excitement. One girl had to turn away, she squeezed her hands into fists and said "I've never been so nervous!" Made my heart proud to see them take ownership of their little project.

All in all, I hope we inspired at least a few girls. Some classes didn't ask us any questions, and some seemed interested. I am satisified with just the fact the girls now know what engineering is, which many of them did not. Most did not, even.

Who knows, one day maybe I'll see a girl walking around on campus who looks familiar. If I hear her say "ya'll," I'm walking over to say hello. :)

Snippets from Dixie, where the grocery store is the Piggly Wiggly

I have really loved being down here in Alabama. I am most certainly in the South, internet! How do I know? Oh, so many things I have missed.... The food is amazing. Went to a lunch buffet one day, and they had fried catfish and chicken livers and black-eyed peas and fried okra - yum! Then we went to a diner another night, and I had shepard's pie, and they brought it out with a side of a grilled cheese sandwich. Only in the south, my dears. And the sweet tea - oh, the sweet tea. They had it at the cafeteria for lunch at one of the schools, and I went back for so many refills that I nearly had to slosh my way back to the room for the afternoon's presentations. They don't make it correctly in the northeast, I am quite certain. I ordered it again with my pulled pork BBQ sandwich tonight, and I swear if I could smuggle that whole meal back through the airport I would seriously consider making room in some bodily cavity.

And I love the people here. My southern accent from college has been becoming stronger every day, and even the "ya'll" slipped in to something I said yesterday - yikes! Thought that one was gone for good... I have never met kinder people than in the south; it puts the fast-paced, in-your-face city culture to shame. Everyone is so appreciative, and goes out of their way to make myself and my partner comfortable. I am always addressed as "ma'am" by the students, and thanked on my way out for the day. I mentioned to my host that I was looking forward to a cherry limeade from Sonic here, and she immediately insisted we take a Sonic gift card she had.

This was good, because it allowed me to introduce my partner to the wonder that is Sonic. She didn't realize it was a drive-in. In fact, she had never been to a drive-in and had no idea how one worked. "So, they come out to your car? How do they know when you are ready to order?" Oh honey, let me educate you! She said as we were leaving, "Oh now the Sonic TV ads finally make sense! I never understood why those people were always in their car!"

And you know that CNN story about the pilot who sent his plane to crash in Florida while he bailed out in Alabama? That was right where we are. Our helpful host pointed out the Kangaroo gas station where he stopped, and the tiny little motel he stayed in. The motel, by the way, looked like a place where you might get shanked. You pay by the hour for your room, it said on the sign.

And the final touch on my reconnection with the south this trip? Driving by the proudly flying Confederate flag.

Speaking to the Girls

So I am here in Alabama with the Women's Initiative program this week, and I am having a great time. The people here warm my heart - the south has a special place there already, and the kindness and laid-back attitude of everyone here just cement it there. Although it's cold, dangit, no respite from the chilly NorthEast.

My partner and I give a presentations to eight schools in five days - we've been to four so far. We work in 50-minute intervals through the day, the standard school period. We start out by explaining what engineering is, and what the different kinds are. We show lots of pictures of our lives to try and dispel some myths - that only no girls are engineers, that everybody's a nerd, that you have to sit in front of a computer all day, or that it's lonely. We show some cool videos of things engineers do, and highlight a few women in engineering who have made significant achievements. Then, pretty much, they are tuning out.

So we do an activity - we pass out spaghetti and jumbo marshmallows, and hold a competition to see which team can build the tallest tower that holds the most weight. It seems silly, but the students love it. And it really does illustrate how engineers work - you have a problem statement, limited resources and time, a group to work with, you've got to make educated decisions, and there's a reckoning at the end. It's perfect! And a hoot to watch from my end.

So really there's only one thing that bothers me so far. I knew we'd be speaking to highschool students, and yes that's true. But it turns out I missed the simple fact we are speaking only to girls - females only. I guess I just assumed we'd be speaking to the whole class and emphasizing the female angle. But, nope.

At first I just thought, whoops, shouldn't have missed that obvious point. But now at a couple of schools, wires have gotten crossed and highschool guys end up being sent over to our presentation. It irritates me that we have to turn them away - I see no reason why they can't stay. In fact, I'm not sure why the program was set up this way. Of course it's good to talk to high school girls about engineering, that's why I volunteered. But I'm not sure we should be purposely excluding the boys - it's not like we are saying anything girl-classified, for crying out loud. 

And if it's a problem with supplies, I don't buy that. The expensive part is my partner and I - the plane tickets, rental car, hotel stay for a week. The spaghetti and marhsmallows do not the budget break, my friend.

So I'm thinking I will put in a suggestion to include all the kids in the class when we report back at debriefing at the end of this program.

What do you think - is it a good idea to present about engineering to girls exclusively? And, while I'm on it, what do you think is the most important thing for me to tell them in our presentation?

4:30 a.m. does not come easy

So this week I am in Alabama with a program called Women's Initiative, which sends pairs of girls all over the U.S. to talk with highschool girls about engineering. I am excited about this opportunity, because I think it's important that girls at least know that engineering is an option.

I have a partner who is a sophomore in Mechanical Engineering, and we get along splendidly. Except that she booked our flight for 6am this morning. Yikers. I usually don't go to bed until 2 a.m. on the weekends anyway, and in order to get to the airport I was going to need to leave at 4:30am. 

So I just didn't go to bed.

At three I realized I should probably not leave my dirty dishes in the sink, so I washed all my cups and plates and clattered around for a while. I'm not sure, my roommate may have preferred I leave the dishes.... At four I finished packing and peeked out my window, only to find that there was about five inches of snow on the ground, more falling, and a lovely wind whipping it all to top it off.

So I grumbled to myself, of all the days, now I have to take snowboots, I should be in bed... I decided I didn't want to wear snowboots and lug them all around Alabama, when all I needed was to walk two blocks to the cab stand. So I tromped outside in my regular shoes, and of course four steps into the snow I could feel my socks filling with water. Blast it all. And I couldn't roll my little suitcase in six inches of snow, so I had to carry it to the cab stand.

And as I peered into the snow-laden wind, lugging my suitcase with my squishy shoes, I noticed a figure in front of me. Who in the....? At 4:30 in the morning, some guy in a hoodie with a backpack was walking fifty feet in front of me. As we got closer to the cab stand, I could see there was only one lone taxi waiting. All of a sudden I had the thought - he wants that cab.

So I tried to speed up, but it's slippery in regular shoes, and so I ended up sort of shuffling along the sidewalk, holding my earmufflers with one hand and suitcase in the other. As hoodie guy got closer to the lone cab, I thought I saw him start to turn towards.... but no, it was just the wind pushing him over. He kept on, and I got the cab.

Which is good, I thought, as I reflected in the cab with the snow melting down the front of my shirt. Because I might have decked him with my suitcase.