A reason to celebrate March 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, older son.Tags: education, gifted, high school
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A couple months ago, I mentioned that the older boy had been kicked out of school. Today, however, we’re celebrating because he took and passed his GED last week, and we got his scores this morning.
I was rather nervous that he might not pass one or two of the sections, but I ended up being very wrong. He was in the 98th or 99th percentile (and aced the science exam) on all but one section: writing. I’m actually surprised he did that well given he’s really never had any high school classes in any of this stuff. He’d done a lot of stuff in math online, and he had taken the US History CLEP exams last year. On the other hand, I’m not surprised that writing was his poorest test. It’s not that he’s a poor writer, because he’s not. However, he has significant difficulty with the physical act of writing, which really slows him down. Also, they asked him to write on sports, of all things. Poor kid.
However, he did pass the exam, and now he’s said he wants to go to college. I told him that he’s got about a year and a half before getting his apps in, so he needs to figure out where he wants to go and what he wants to do when he gets there. I’m curious to see what he decides. In the short term, however, he’s studying for another CLEP. After that, he gets to join the adult world for real: it’s time to start looking for a job.
I might be *gasp* a role model March 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, feminism, gifted, math, societal commentary, younger son.Tags: feminism, girls, math, nerd girls, role models
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My younger son is in chess club, and one of the girls, whom I’ll call K, is in his class and also in the club. K is a pretty bright cookie as she has won things like spelling bee and chess tournaments. I was picking him up from the club on Tuesday when K said hi as she walked by. A couple seconds later, K came back to ask me if I would be coming to their class for our weekly math lesson this week. I said I would, and she cheerily went on her way.
I went in for our lesson earlier today, only to find that the teacher was sick. Rather than work with the smaller group of kids as planned, I offered to read the whole class a math story (which I’ve been doing every other week). So I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter. They were all very excited, and there was a lot of discussion about the story.
At the end of the session, one of the girls came up to me (whom I’ll call F). F isn’t in the group I work with regularly, so I don’t know much about her other than she’s not as advanced in math. (I assumed that meant she wasn’t all that interested in it.) She’d been in the restroom and had missed the first page of the story and wanted to see it. I said I could leave the book with her to read. She was very excited. Then K came up and gave me a hug, and after she was finished, F gave me a hug. I was rather shocked, though certainly not unhappy about it.
I’m trying to process it, though, and it seems interesting in light of a couple semi-related things. First, I came across an article about how reducing academic pressure helps kids succeed. Given the younger boy was having huge difficulties with perfectionism, my response to this was, I admit, nothing more than, “Duh!” We’re helping him to deal with this by using his math program. Some days he does very well, other days, he’ll get somewhere between 75% and 80% right. I try to tell him that I appreciate his hard work, and that if he doesn’t get it right, it only means he needs more practice. He’s also learning that he almost never gets 100%…and that is making him okay with doing things wrong. Yeah, he still gets frustrated, but he’s not so scared to try anymore.
However, I realized that I’m kind of doing this with the kids I’ve been working with at school. I’m doing stuff with them that I don’t completely expect them to get, but I also don’t get upset if they get it wrong. And there’s no grades. We’re doing it to have fun and to learn, and I think the kids really like doing something just for fun.
Another recent event was when a coworker started lamenting to me how his daughters, who are middle school aged, seem uninterested in math. Being an engineer, he’s very disappointed, especially because they seem to be quite good at it. I suggested he get the books written by Danica McKellar and give them to his daughters.
Now, I have to say that I can’t imagine myself reading those books when I was that age (of course, I could very well be wrong – although I had some unusual role models). On the other hand, I figure that if there are bright girls out there who are eschewing math and these books get them interested, then I’m all for it. It turns out that my coworker did give them the books and, even better, they really seem to be enjoying them. Maybe they won’t turn into math majors, but he seems a lot happier, and they may be enjoying math more.
I’ve talked about efforts like Nerd Girls in the past, and I have to admit I felt it was stupid to try to ‘girlify’ engineering to attract women. On the other hand, I’m obviously the kind of woman who wasn’t very stuck on social messages about women in science or engineering. It’s not hard to imagine that there are a lot of young, intelligent girls out there who feel social pressure to avoid technical areas because they lack role models. Maybe some of those girls really need things like Nerd Girls and Danica’s books. I don’t have any daughters, so I can’t really say much based on experience. After my experience today, though, I’m wondering if female role models are far more important to some girls than I ever thought.
Second grade logic and rulers February 23, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, math, teaching.Tags: angles, education, geometry, kids, rulers, sir cumference
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Today, I went back to work with the second graders. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about circles and degrees and Babylonian units and π.
My plan has changed from the original one of trying to teach the kids a bunch of applied stuff. I’ve pretty much given in to teaching them historical discoveries in math simply because there’s a lot of stuff you can do that doesn’t require multiplication and division. It’s been a lot of fun, but I decided to try something different but related: I wanted to teach them out to make a formal mathematical proof. Okay, not terribly formal. What I want them to learn is how to use logic to make a proof. I suspect some of them know already (based on some of the arguments I’ve had with my son who has rock solid 7-year-old logic). However, I’d like them to use their brains for good instead of getting out of (or into) trouble.
The thing about geometrical proofs is that they really aren’t that hard. At least, I never found them to be. I remember sitting in 10th grade geometry and being given T-charts. I would race through them and ace them all. I was horribly surprised to see that my classmates had difficulty with them as well as complaining the teacher was too abstract. I threw the idea of proofs out to Mike, and he said that pretty much the only tool you need is a brain, so it’s probably a good idea. (I’d have to disagree…you need a brain…but you also need a pencil, paper, ruler, and protractor. But otherwise, I think he’s right.)
Today, we started with the concept a line and measuring its angle. I know my former math instructor wouldn’t approve, but I’m teaching them to use degrees (aka Babylonian Units) because that’s what’s on the protractor. Also, I’m not sure how versed they are in fractions, so we’re not going to get into fractional parts of π. (Actually, if anyone has ever seen a protractor with units of π rather than degrees, please let me know as I’d love to buy it.)
Once we had a line, then I told them to draw a point on the line with another line coming out of it, so that it would look like this (without the measurements):
Each of them drew the line coming out an a different angle. They all measured their angles and found that they all summed to 180°. A couple of the kids seemed surprised that they all ended up with the same number. Incidentally, those that didn’t seem surprised were very absorbed with the flexible rulers I had brought to use. (Note to self: second-graders are easily distracted by anything novel.) We then talked about how any two angles, if they formed a straight line, would add up to 180° and how this was known as the supplementary angle theorem.
Once we had that down, we used it to prove the vertical angle theorem. It took them a bit to realize that the line created by adding supplementary angles doesn’t have to be horizontal (like in the picture above).
That’s all we got through today, but I plan on using this to show them that the interior angles of a triangle always add up to 180°. It might take us a couple weeks to get there, especially since next week I’m supposed to read them a couple more of the Sir Cumference books.
Scientist, with kids February 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, engineering, family, feminism, grad school, homeschooling, older son, personal, physics, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, gender equity, kids, parenting, role models, sexism
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FSP has a post asking about the Local Mom Effect. That is, she wonders if being in a department with more women professors who have kids affects the outlook of younger women in the field. I find this post interesting…but also, I hate to say it, irrelevant.
Let’s put it this way: what women?!
When I started school at Caltech, I knew of two women professors out of all of math, physics, and astronomy. I only ever met one of them, knew she had no kids. I knew nothing about the other professor. When I decided to go back to school a few years later, I ended up in a physics dept. where the professors were all men. Later, I ended up in an electrical engineering department where the professors were all men.
I guess that, in my mind, the notion of being one of the few women in the department was no different than being one of the few women with kids in the department. When I went back to school, I had a kid already, so it wasn’t like I really had a choice about whether or not to be a childless woman in physics or engineering.
I will say that when I originally got pregnant as an undergrad at Caltech, I was told by my advisor that women couldn’t do calculus while pregnant and that I should drop out. Of course, he was a guy, so I seriously doubted he understood how women’s brains work while pregnant. (And it turns out that I can do calculus great while pregnant…I just can’t speak a full sentence coherently.) However, I guess I never took it as a message that women with kids don’t belong in science…I inferred that he meant it more personally, and that I myself was not a good fit for science. (Fortunately, major hopping got boring after a while, I ended up back in physics.)
When I went back to school, however, I felt that being the only woman or one of a few was very advantageous for several reasons. First, if I was the only woman or one of a very small number, I was already an oddity. A woman with kids is probably not much more odd than a woman without, and there was really no one to compare myself to (or say that I was doing it wrong). Second, I went back to school in North Dakota, and it really seems like people here more or less expect you to have kids no matter what you’re doing. I know that grates on some people, but for me, it was a blessing: having kids is just another part of life, and most people here learn to do their jobs while having them. (Also, I can’t recall anyone having a fit if I said I couldn’t make it to something because of kid-related issues.) Third, I was older than the average undergraduate or even grad student, so I think people assumed that it was pretty normal for someone my age to have kids. The fact that the younger students didn’t have kids was simply a function of age and never made me feel self-conscious that I did have kids. Finally, when I started my MS, my advisor was fine with the fact that I was homeschooling the older boy and would only be doing my degree part-time. He said this was really no different than other students in the department who were working full-time and pursing their degree part-time, as well.
I have been told, especially when doing my PhD classes, that it was “really cool to see a woman in science with kids”, especially by some fellow grad students. Until I started my PhD, I really hadn’t expected it to be a big deal. It had never occurred to me that I might be a “role model”…but I keep hearing it more than I ever expected to. I also suspect it’s because I often had kids with me or family issues that were more apparent to fellow grad students. Many professors try to maintain a more professional relationship with their students, and it doesn’t surprise me that many grad students don’t see how having kids affects the lives of the professors or that they don’t realize some professors have kids at all.
Realistically, I only got here because I didn’t really know that what I was doing was unusual in any way. If I had been surrounded by women who had kids but never let it on or didn’t have kids, I might have felt self-conscious about being a mom already. With no one to compare to, however, I just assumed that it wasn’t any more abnormal than a woman without kids.
You ought to… February 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, grad school.Tags: academia, career, community college
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I was discussing some of my career aspirations the other day. After talking a bit, the person I was talking to lifted their index finger in that way people do when they’re trying to be thoughtful.
“You know, you really ought to get a job at a community college.”
I was floored. The person realizes that despite the fact I could have stayed here and finished my PhD in just a couple years, I chose to go someplace else and spend two years apart from my family because I didn’t want the stigma of “only been at one school”. Why would I do that if I wanted to teach at a community college? In fact, why would I go get a PhD at all? I could start teaching at a CC after finishing my MS and not put myself through all that.
I’m not saying this as a slight to community college teachers, either. I went to a community college for a couple years and had some of the most awesome teachers I’d ever met there. It’s just that 1 – it’s not really where I want to go and 2 – I don’t think I could handle it. Given the choice between research or technical work and teaching general ed-type classes, I’m pretty sure research would win out. I’ve learned that I can live without spending hours in front of students or grading papers, but I can’t live without the mental stimulation that doing technical work provides. Further, I’ve had the opportunity to teach in high schools as well as general ed labs for non-science majors. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I like teaching labs for circuits, optics, and physics. I love teaching, but I’ve also learned that the material I like to teach is not suited for just an average student. I like math and theory, and most community colleges are not going to be offering the kinds of things I would love to teach, at least not at a high level.
Now realistically, if that was the only job available, I’d take it and try to be a totally kick ass teacher that makes their students want to be great scientists and engineers…or whatever else they want to be. I just am not convinced that’s a good first career choice for me.
Anyway, this whole interaction was very disappointing because it left me feeling that this person either has little faith in me or really doesn’t understand my interests well at all. I do realize they had no intention of making me feel bad, but I still felt slighted. It was all the more disappointing given that this person, in the past, has been very encouraging of my career goals.
The care and feeding of minions February 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, research, work.Tags: minion, students
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Shortly after seeing the movie Despicable Me, the younger son asked Mike if the people who worked for him were minions (like the little yellow guys in the movie) or henchmen (presumably from some other movie he’d seen). When I was in the lab one day, I asked a couple such individuals which they preferred. The one who’d graduated said he preferred henchman, while the undergrad liked minion. After that, we determined that we’d call all the undergrads minions, and once they graduate, they become henchmen.
It turns out that we’ve had one minion who started as a freshman and is the only undergrad working for my husband right now. Because we’re both doing electromagnetics work, I would sometimes get the minion on loan. One of these episodes was during the development of the Widget. I came up with the idea and did a variety of simulations. Once I got to a point where I didn’t feel we could progress much using the simulations, I had the Minion build up some prototypes and test them out. He’s far less concerned about losing brain cells from nasty chemicals more adept in the lab than I am, so despite the fact that what I asked him to do involved a lot of drudgery, he was very willing. What he didn’t realize is that he would make something and test it…then I’d go back and ask him to modify it and test again…and repeat that ad nauseum.
I really hate giving him all the ‘boring’ work but I have to admit that without his help, the project would have gone much more slowly. He was put as second author on the Widget paper, and has also been lead author on a couple other papers as they were his own projects. Now, he will apparently get a bit of publicity for his role as an undergrad who has had an opportunity to do some research. He deserves this as he’s one of those people who you can hand stuff to and rely on them to do a good job and get it done quickly.
In fact, he’s so dedicated to his work, that he’s even willing to risk his own health!
Just kidding.
But seriously, thanks for everything, Layne. We’re glad to have you around.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
The Brain Drain March 22, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, Fargo, grad school, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: fargo, higher education, north dakota, politics, universities
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Yesterday, I was getting into my car when I noticed something on my windshield.
My neighbor had seen the article about me in yesterday’s paper and left me a message about it. In fact, it hit three of major newspapers in the state. (If you care to read it, one copy is located here.)
When I was asked by the public relations person at NDSU if she could feature my research as part of an effort to promote the supercomputing facilities on campus, I was certainly glad to do so. First, from a simply pragmatic point of view, it’s not a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. (Although, to be honest, they have a lot of other projects they could’ve featured.) Second, and more important in my mind, is that this type of thing counters some of the negative attitude about the state universities in the western part of the state.
People from out of state (probably the 4 of my 5 readers) are probably not aware that there is a bit of a divide in state politics, and it can be roughly framed by drawing a vertical line down the center of the state. The eastern part of the state has the major universities and sees the benefits of having them. The western part of the state thinks the universities are sucking all of their hard-earned money, and worse yet – children, away from them.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s all I heard about was the ‘brain drain’ that the state was suffering: all of those bright, hard-working, born-in-North-Dakota kids were being educated at a low cost and then leaving the state. The people in the western part of the state seemed to think we just ought not to spend so much money educating them. I don’t think they understood that the likely result of that would not be to prevent brain drain but to accelerate it as those students would end up leaving for colleges out of state. On the other hand, the eastern part of the state was asking for more and more money to fund already seriously underfunded universities which were teaching a lot more kids than they could realistically accommodate. And we won’t even talk about research. The universities are supposed to be there to serve the students from the state…what does research have to do with anything?
I was one of those kids that left straight out to go to college, and I really had no intention of returning. I wanted to do research, and I knew that coming out of high school. I knew that because I’d gotten involved in research through a state-sponsored program at NDSU as a high school student, and I also knew that I likely couldn’t do what I wanted here. And why should I, when I could go someplace better?
If you fast forward to about 2000 (when I came back to return to school), there were some significant changes happening. Great Plains software was bought out by Microsoft, making it the second largest Microsoft campus in the world. There were companies in town doing engineering. There was a way to stay in North Dakota with a technical degree. And about that same time, NDSU started to make some aggressive moves to increase the size and reputation of its campus.
In the past ten years (even before the oil boom in the western part of the state), this significantly slowed the population loss the state was suffering. However, the western part of the state was still shrinking, and this was probably aggravating the divide. The eastern part of the state is right, though, IMO. If you want to keep people from leaving, you need to find a way to create jobs, and not just any jobs: they have to be jobs that bright, educated people will want to do. Universities are very often centers of creativity and entrepreneurship, and so bringing in more money to the universities will likely do a lot to create jobs and businesses. Bright, educated people will start businesses to hire those that may not necessarily have the advanced degrees but are still hard workers. The state is finally starting to see that, and they’re also using some of the money from the oil and gas taxes to create incentives for businesses to operate here.
Going back to the article, I was excited to do this as I see this as a way to communicate to the skeptics that the universities are good for the state. Here is a project that I would likely have to do somewhere else if it weren’t for the fact that we have the facilities here and they are easily accessible. Part of the reason I think my research was featured is not only the coolness factor, but the fact that I’m a native of the state and one of the people who, ostensibly, you don’t want leaving for a better job elsewhere. So yes, the universities are doing something to keep people here, even if not in the western part of the state. (On the other hand, it sounds like they have more people there now than they really know what to do with, which is another story altogether.)
My only disappointment in all this is that my hometown paper, the Bismarck Tribune, didn’t run the story. I can’t help but wonder if that is a result of the fact that the divide still obviously exists.