In the meme I did the other day, I said this...
Childhood dream? To be married to the love of my life, to be a scientist (I used to think biology), and of course to be happy. I'm not sure if kids were involved in my dreams when I was a kid, but I love my little girls now and if I hadn't been so egocentric (typical child) I would have dreamed about little girls like I have.
It's all true. I wanted to be a high school biology teacher. As I did the meme, I remembered what inspired my love of science. I watched this show when I was very young and it made me want to be just like Andrea Thomas (a high school biology teacher). I thought she was the coolest. It's funny, television gets such a bad rap, but I know that it inspired me (Isis in particular!).
The other thing that inspired me was this. Yes, I'm dating myself here. In the 70's and early 80's, Merlin was the most amazing thing. I begged my parents for one and they got me one of the first ones. Someday I'll have to tell you more about it.
There were so many other things in my life that tried to extinguish my interest in science. I'm not going to go into all of them now, but where I was raised girls were encouraged to be "pretty" and "not think too much." People worried that if you thought too much, you might scare off a potential husband. I played dumb a lot. I even got so good at playing dumb that I doubted my own capabilities for a while. But that's the subject of another post....
Anyway, I'm excited because the show (Isis) that I loved as a child is coming out soon on video. The meme made me think about the show again and then the Internet (oh how I love you!) helped me find out about the show and its status. (Yea, I am a geek.)
I will get the DVD(s) of the show and watch them. If they aren't too hokey, or bad*, most likely, I will pass Isis down to my girls to watch (and hopefully she will inspire the next generation).
Sidebar: There's been a lot of research about girls, math, science, technology and engineering. Women in these fields are somewhat scarce. I don't actually qualify as a "hard core" scientist... I'm a social scientist with a significant quantitative background who works a lot with technology. I've done some work with this organization in the past and plan to again in the future. There are other organizations with similar missions too. If you want to learn more, google girls, math, science, technology and you'll get some good hits.
*I watched the Jetsons as an adult and I was very disappointed in the show. I couldn't believe all the martini drinking, cigarette smoking, and adult jokes that were involved. Thankfully as a kid, I missed all that!
1 comment:
There is a long history in my maternal line of women assuming that they (and/or their daughters) will never marry because they are too clever. Despite this we have continued to marry and breed. Either some human males are not adverse to intelligence or we're not as bright as we think we are. I like to believe the former :-)
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