Okay everybody, let's take a kittenPAUSE.
While I'm sitting at work, waiting for a webcam software to install that was manufactured in, wait for it, 2002 (oh and by the way, this is the updated version), I figured I would take these few precious moments of being connected to the world by more than a two-year-old Droid with a horrible OS (really, motoblur, and it has no support) to talk a little bit about Sally Ride and Women in Science in general.
Well, I mean I am a Woman (ish, does 22 make me woman? Am I more than Young Lady? Lady? Definitely not a Ma'am.) And I have a degree in Astrophysics. So that should qualify me to talk about Women in Science.
Actually the whole topic is something really interesting to me, and all the more interesting because I am really passionate about girls doing science and equal potential and all those really important things, but at the same time, as someone who is working on getting kids interested in science and showing the wonder of science, there's a sort of untruth because I myself have chosen not to have a science research career. Not because I couldn't, or because professors doubted me (actually one of my professors is still convinced I'll get my PhD in Astronomy,) or any of that but because the day to day work in science just didn't mesh with my personality. Took me four years to admit that, but there it is. I want to inspire kids, girls in particular, to love science and the cool things that we can do because of it, but I don't want to sit in a lab all day.
But Sally Ride went through all the really arduous getting-your-PhD-in-Physics-ness, was the first American woman in space, and, in 2001, finally started her own inspire-girls-to-do-science company. And she was certainly someone who inspired me. I was never under the impression that I couldn't do science because ew-that's-what-boys-do. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, astronaut, astrophysicist - I could do and be any of those things because all of them were achievable through hard work. Well, a little luck might be required for the astronaut, but because of Sally Ride and women like her, I never felt a huge wall standing between me and being a Woman of Science.
Since she passed away on July 23 of pancreatic cancer, I just wanted to take this pause to remember her and all of the inspiration that she has given thousands, if not millions, of girls since her groundbreaking flight in 1983. Because of her, I never thought that a woman couldn't be an astronaut. I didn't have to overcome huge hurdles of "girls just can't do science." And I just wanted to say thank you to her.
Thanks Sally. I never knew you, you never knew me, but your work did not go unnoticed and so many girls do not have to face the barriers you met because of what you did.
PLAY
