Jane the . . . Chemist?

Last updated on: January 23, 2014 at 10:31 pm by Jane the Actuary

Jane the . . . Chemist? 2014-01-23T22:31:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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King of the Nerds, eh?

That’s what’s on TV as I write this, and I’m not sure whether Nerds are being mocked or celebrated.

But there was a blog thread over at Ann Althouse’s blog, on girls and STEM; she referenced an old post in which she cited Senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggesting that, “to get girls to go into STEM majors, rather than the ‘helping professions,’ [we should] leverage the (supposed) female desire to help people by explaining to young girls that science and technology do ultimately benefit people.” And she picked up on a line from a lecture by University of Chicago physics professor Sidney Nagel in which he raved about the beauty of water, and she speculated that girls could be encouraged to enter the STEM fields by “appeal[ing] to the love of beauty.”

Which sparked discussion in the comments on the question, basically, of whether Nerds are made, or born, whether a girl (or a boy, for that matter) could be persuaded to study in a STEM field and do well, even if they don’t have a deep abiding love for the subject. Part of the question seems to be a matter of how narrowly you’re thinking of “STEM field.” No one is going to succeed in astrophysics without being exceptionally bright and devoted to the subject. (My husband had a friend from college who is on his way to becoming, in fact, a top physicist, and was reportedly, well, very much on the genius level.)

But STEM is broader — STEM includes computer programmers, and engineers, and research chemists, and not just the top professionals in the field, but people like my college friend who majored in secondary education with a science emphasis, discovered that she couldn’t handle teaching, and happened into a job as an engineering assistant.

But these conversations always leave me wondering: if I had been encouraged in a different direction, had been told bluntly, “history isn’t going to get you anywhere,” would I have become a scientist of some kind? And would I have been any good at it?

My background: in high school, I was your all-purpose honors student. I was interested in politics and public policy, but I had the usual honors math and science like everyone else, and in college I continued with multivariate calculus, one semester each of Honors Chemistry and Physics (to meet general education requirements), and calculus-based statistics. It was a particular point of pride for me that on one of the physics exams, I had the high score in the class (of maybe 40 students or so?). Could I have gone a different direction? Or would I have been a really sucky chemist, or engineer, or what-have-you, because the skills to get through, even do well in a 100-level course, even an honors version, wouldn’t have been enough to take me all the way through a rigorous curriculum?

My youngest son, on the other hand? born for it. He wanted to talk about place value with me before bedtime today. I guess if he were a top intellect, he’d be wanting to talk about place value at the age of 2 rather than 6, but it’s still charming.

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