Dude, SCIENCE.

Hello All,

So this past week, I stumbled across a really powerful advertisement.  It was for Verizon Wireless, and was entitled "Inspire Her Mind".  According to the advertisement, 66% of female 4th graders say that they like science and math, while only 18% of college engineering majors are female.  While I'm not an engineer, I am a female in science, and these numbers speak to me as well.  The advertisement shows a young girl growing up to be of high school age, all while being told that she shouldn't do things are are not particularly considered "female".  She is told not to play with dirt, not to continue a science project, not to handle tools, all things that are encouraged in males.  She is told these negative things by who we can assume to be her parents (we don't actually see a parental figure in the advertisement, just hear their voices), so by the time she reaches high school, she is much more concerned with her looks than with the science she used to love.  Below is the advertisement:

I sincerely relate to Samantha.  I've always lived very close to the ocean, and my love for science started there.  Playing in the waves, observing the tide pools, and even collecting a few specimens of my own were some of my fondest memories as a little girl.  However, those moments are not captured in photographs.  The photographs I have from being a child are all from when I looked particularly cute or had a favorite dress on.  While I do look adorable in those pictures (just sayin'), I don't remember any of those experiences.  But if you look back and try to tell me the story of my life based on pictures, I should be this princess who loves glitter and thankfully plays sports (there are plenty of pictures of me from when I first started to play softball and ski).

^glitter face paint - those of you who know me now know that I would never let glitter get this close to me

Of the many times I'm sure this has happened to me, there is one that I remember quite distinctly.  I remember being probably around 8 or 9, when I found a dead fish in the lake I always hung out at in New Hampshire, and my first thought was to dissect it - I had never seen the insides of a fish before, and I had seen plenty of diagrams in books so I figured I should be able to do it no problem.  The first issue after I announced my intentions to my parents and their friends was that they weren't going to let me use a real knife - I had to use a plastic one.  And that I understand, I was young, but I could have just had some supervision.  After using my 8-year-old muscles to try to saw through this fish, I spilled some of the guts on the sand, and was then reprimanded for getting some fish blood on the beach.  Soon after that, before I even had the chance to look inside, I was made to throw it back into the lake.  I never wanted to dissect anything again until college.  I would be willing to bet that if I were a boy, I would have been allowed to cut the fish open.  

In the society we have grown up in, it has been the man's job to love sports, fix cars, play with computers, grill, build things, and partake in science (all of which I do, except for the fixing cars - but I do know how an internal combustion engine works and that has to count for something, right?).  This was mentioned in my sociology class, and it is a challenge I ask you to extend to every little girl you meet: When you first meet a little girl, refrain from letting the first words out of your mouth be "Well, isn't she pretty!".  We would never say this to a little boy, it would be something more along the lines of what he likes to do, or what sports he's playing.  Telling little girls they are pretty just extenuates the social idea that "pretty" is all girls need to strive to be.  Try telling that little girl that she is smart instead.  Even now, when my parents show their friends a picture of me, the person will comment on how grown-up I look, or how pretty I became, but not about what my college major is or what I plan to do as a career - my parents have to offer that information in addition to "Isn't she pretty?".  

^thankfully, I was signed up to play sports - and I learned quickly how to be the only female in a group (only girl on my team - also the only one smart enough to wear sunglasses in direct sunlight)

Basically, to be a woman in science, I feel like I have beaten the odds, which is not what it should feel like.  I shouldn't feel out of place when I am the only woman working in a genetics lab, or the one who has to help my male friends with chemistry.  I've grown tired of getting strange looks when I tell them what I want to do with my life, and the only comment they say is that "That's impressive for being a woman".  The biggest thing is, this doesn't just apply to the sciences, this applies to almost all the major types of work.  I had a friend who just graduated (graduated and employed) who was afraid to wear her favorite pink pants at work since she was working in a male-dominated field.  No woman should be afraid to express her femininity at work for fear of being scrutinized.  I hope she wears her pink pants often.  And in conclusion, please consider taking up that challenge I offered earlier that was offered to me in my sociology class: don't tell little girls that they are pretty.

Thanks for reading, as always,
Kim

New Home!

Hi guys!

Some of you may or may not know, but I just moved into my first house last week!  While I am extremely excited to begin this new chapter, if only for a summer, we have definitely hit a few bumps in the road.  But first, I list the awesome things about living in your own house with your friends!

• No RAs :) - sorry to my RA friends
• You can literally do anything you want with decorations, furniture, setting up drawers, and more
• I CAN COOK MY OWN FOOD - those of you who know me know that this is a really big deal!
• I can really have control over what I put in my body - I'm trying to only buy real food, not the freezer stuff full of chemicals, and I can decide to not keep sweets in the house
• We can host parties, pregames, and more!

These are absolutely awesome things about having my own place.  It also allows you to get to know your roommates even more than living in a sorority house.  When responsibilities are greater, like dishwashing, cooking, and yes, laundry too.  You learn more about your friends' habits than you ever wanted to either :) With that, it brings me to the not-so-great things about house living, 

• Instead of RAs, you can get the cops called on you (whoops!)
• You have a lot of space to decorate, and not nearly enough money to do it
• With cooking your own food, it can really take a lot of time out of your day, time that can be spent running errands, doing homework, and studying
• With buying real food, it can get expensive, and adding that to rent, water, electricity, cable, internet, and everything else, it all adds up really fast
• With hosting parties, someone has to clean up after...

I mean, the good things definitely outweigh the bad, and the more time I can spend with my friends, the better!  Our house is still in the works of being unpacked and set up, and hopefully we can do it by this weekend.  If you're looking to living on your own (aka not in the dorms) I highly recommend choosing to live with people who like to cook and appreciate food, it makes it a lot easier to entertain :) as well as setting down house rules and chores so you don't have those awkward moments when you have washed the dishes every day of the week and don't know how to ask someone else to do it (haven't reached that point yet, hopefully we don't get there) but this is definitely something I wish we did, and there's still time!  

Living in your own place is a huge step in adulthood (my god, who let me be an adult?), and adulthood definitely has its perks.  We bought a bar the other day just for kicks so we can entertain like the classy women we are (just ignore the fact that it's stuffed with red solo cups).  But living like an adult means acting like an adult, and that's sometimes really hard to do when all you want to do is sleep all day and have your mom make you dinner, especially when your parents are really good cooks, and not to mention, they send me pictures of the amazing (expensive) food they make, which is probably the worst part about being away from home.  Anyway, I'm so excited to see where this summer goes, and now that I'm in a house, hopefully a lot of parties can be held and a very good time can be had!

Thanks for reading!

Kim

The Joys of Packing

Well, I have just hit that time of year where I gather up all my belongings and uproot somewhere else until I come back to college.  I like to call it "packing".  I live in a home with 30 other women, and I haven't heard any positive things to be said about packing up their stuff, which is weird for me since I think packing is great!  If we never packed up our stuff to leave, we would never find our favorite pair of shorts we lost in January, or that picture that was never meant to see the light of day.  Personally, it takes me a really long time to pack because I just sit and go through my memories of the time I've spent in that place.

Most recently, I just stumbled upon a book I thought I'd lost that I love, called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (I highly recommend it, even if you're not science-y like me), so I just started reading it again, and I'm reminded why I loved this book so much in the first place, especially in science-based writing, it's very hard to not be extremely dry, and this book does a great job of it.

I also found my wine bottle corker, been looking for that for months!

One hard thing about attending college far away from home is you never know what exactly you need when you come to college.  Yes, no one actually knows, but at least you can get the stuff you forgot or bring unnecessary things home.  I've felt awful this whole year for taking up way more space in my room than either of my two roommates, but have been justifying it to myself by the fact that I live 2,000 miles away from home, while both of them live within 40 minutes.  However, I realized while packing up my things that I didn't use about a third of the things I brought with me, and that I had been taking up all that space for no good reason (sorry roomies!).  This is another great thing about packing: if you don't have hard emotional attachments to things, you can really purge everything unnecessary, like the 10 sweatshirts I haven't worn in two years.

^my room is so sad now!

The adventures of packing up all your stuff can actually be a good time (like the time my roommate and I drove around for two hours trying to find boxes in a part of Denver we had never seen - good times) but it's sad as well, because you know you're leaving the place where you made so many memories over the past year and that you won't see the people you are used to seeing every day for a long time.  The bright and fun room I've lived in this year is now drab and dull, but this just means that I have the chance to redecorate my new place of residence - right across the hall!

This time packing is more bittersweet than I intended it to be, especially saying goodbye to my friends and sisters.  I will be headed abroad to Zanzibar in August to study coastal ecology for four months, so I won't see some of the amazing people I've spent time with this year until 2015.  But I know when I get back and am able to unpack, I'm going to start a great Junior year at the University of Denver!

^yay for studying abroad on an island that no one's ever heard of!

Thanks for reading!
Kim

Mind over Matter

Hi guys!

Been super busy with school, so I haven't posted in a while.  But the fact that I was so busy with school to write a blog post sparked an idea for my newest blog post!

After just freaking out about taking my finals (yay for the quarter system!) and just finishing them a few hours ago, I'm finally on Spring Break!  Since I've entered college, I've realized a noticeable shift in the ideals of students as it pertains to their classes.  All through high school, I was taught that it was more important to understand the information than to get a good grade in the class via memorization.  And that has been my mindset since then and through college so far.  What I've noticed lately is how obsessed college students are with their grades!  The want to know what they got on an exam immediately after they finished, they want to know what other people in their class got right away, they want to know their grade updated to-the-minute, they want to know how much the class will be curved, it doesn't end!

I couldn't tell you how many times I've been asked what I got on an exam by a stranger in my class right after I pick it up.  It's not your business to know my grade, that's between me and my professor.  I just calmly tell these people that I don't discuss grades, and they look at me like I have two heads or get defensive.  I don't need to know what this person got on an exam, why do they need to know what I got?  Because we are being brought up to value our grades above everything else, and to measure our self-worth via a letter, and in my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of how we should be handling education, especially higher education.
Learning should be exactly that, learning.  When I walk into class every day, I shouldn't be thinking about whether or not I need to know a vocab word or concept for the next exam, I should walk into class ready to learn about the topics and ask questions that further my understanding, not my pet peeve: "Do we have to know this for the exam?".

The point is, where is the want for learning in college students?  We are supposed to be the ones who are curious about the world around us and want to understand it, not just take exams, get a grade, and get trapped in a vicious cycle.  Grades are important, they do give us a good idea of how well we understand the information as presented in class through the professor's eyes, but they should be second to understanding the material.  Memorization, and not understanding, has been encouraged, and this has the potential to have a detrimental effect on the next generation of academics.

^just for fun :) here's an image of all the neural networks inside your brain!  Yay science!

That wasn't meant to be so dreary, but I really wanted to make a point.  I'm also considering intermittently blogging about cool and controversial science, so be on the lookout for that.  When you start your next round of classes, please go in with the mindset that you want to really understand the information, don't just mindlessly take notes and them memorize them for the final.  Now go and read something academic just because!  If you would like a suggestion, try http://www.iflscience.com/

Kim  

Time to Get Pretty!

Girls are imprinted with the idea that they have to look pretty from a very young age.  Some girls go to college embracing this, while others reject it.  Both are completely fine ways to live life, but I firmly believe that girls need a few times per year where she can really make herself pretty and pamper herself.  I think it's important to feel pretty!

Being a member of a sorority, we have a formal event every quarter.  I am definitely not one to get dressed up on a normal occasion, or spend more than 30 seconds on my makeup on a daily basis.  But put a formal event within five hours of my future, and I get extremely excited about getting "pretty".  I start prepping my hair the night before, spent over an hour on my hair the day of, and got in a long line to have my makeup done (because I am hopeless at doing my own makeup).

Feeling pretty, while it is not essential for succeeding in life, is a great confidence-booster, and I love seeing girls taking time to make themselves as beautiful as possible.  One of my favorite parts of formals is seeing everyone looking beautiful and happy that they look so beautiful.  It's important to feel pretty!

Some girls put hours into their appearances every day, and it's very important to them to feel beautiful, and that's absolutely fantastic!  Some girls wake up, throw on some mascara and foundation, and that's fantastic too!  But feeling pretty is part of being a girl, especially a sorority girl, and I think it's crucial to see how beautiful you can look to help build confidence!

Thanks for reading!
Kim

Sportsmanship is Not Dead

In honor of the Winter Olympics in Sochi (also, if you haven't followed @SochiProblem) on Twitter, go check that out right now, then come back and read, I've decided to write about sportsmanship.  The Olympics are the world's biggest stage, and the best athletes from every country gather for seventeen days to compete and bring pride to their home countries.  The competition is steep and athletes are under severe pressure, even more so if they've been to an Olympics before and performed well.  What many athletes seem to forget, as well as viewers around the world, is that medaling in the Olympics isn't the sole purpose of the Games.

When Olympic athletes fall, are slow, or in any ways don't get that Gold, so many of them are genuinely pissed that they didn't win.  Now I've played sports all my life and been very competitive in softball and skiing, and I completely understand being pissed at myself for doing playing or doing as well as I know I can, but that frustration in myself only lasts for so long.  And I know that I am not a professional athlete, but I am very hard on myself in any sort of competition, and although I am hard on myself and get frustrated at myself, I still appreciate when someone does better than me.  They may genuinely be better than me, or they may have just had a better day than I did.

What bothers me is, athletes are seen as role models to so many people, especially those athletes wearing the colors of their home countries.  When an athlete is expected to medal and doesn't, some take it with grace, while some become verbally upset and make sure everyone knows how upset they are.  Some 4th place athletes tweet about how pissed they are and make it seem like they deserved a Gold just by showing up to Sochi.  In reality, it all has to deal with the day, the conditions (especially in outdoor sports), and sometimes it's just not your day.

*WARNING.  SPOILERS AHEAD* Watching Shaun White tonight was, as always, incredible.  He was the reigning Olympic champion and the favorite to win again.  Sochi was expected to be his last hurrah, since he will be 31 if he competes in South Korea.  Unfortunately, Shaun didn't medal, he got fourth place.  Fourth place.  That's AMAZING.  Honestly.  Fourth IN THE WORLD.  While most only see accomplishment as getting a medal, finishing fourth place in the world in the Olympics is an amazing feat.  But the best part about Shaun was after he heard his score and knew that he wasn't going to be on the podium and would leave Sochi without a medal, he was excited about fourth place and immediately went to congratulate the Swiss boarder who won.  During his interview, he didn't blame the judges or get pissed, he simply said that "it just wasn't my day".  Even after the interviewer tried to get him to complain about the conditions of the halfpipe to fuel the #SochiProblems rage.  Even when it would have been perfectly acceptable for him to say that it was the conditions' fault and that's why he wasn't able to medal, he didn't complain about the pipe, he said exactly what he should have: "the conditions were the same for everyone".  He should be very proud of a fourth place finish, even though the USA might not be happy with it.

Sportsmanship is not just shaking hands at the end of a game and fake smiling at each other followed immediately by "resting bitch face".  Sportsmanship is trying to be genuinely happy for those who beat you, even though you are upset that you lost.  The Olympics are the world's biggest stage for competition, but it doesn't mean that professional athletes are exempt from the values we were taught since we started the sport.  We started playing sports to have fun and make friends, and even when the competition is as steep as it is in Sochi, we shouldn't forget the values that sports teach us.

Happy Olympics!
USA, USA, USA

Thanks for reading!
Kim

Girls Love Sports, Too!

Girls do, in fact, love sports.  Being a female sports fan, I constantly endure questions about WHY I'm a sports fan.  Is it because I think Dustin Pedroia has a great ass?  Is it because I like Troy Polamalu's Head & Shoulders commercials?  While those things are true (I AM a girl), I love sports just as much as I love anything else.

I will laugh and cry and scream going along with the ups and downs of my teams.  I will yell at my TV, bitch about the refs and umps, and stand in line at obscene hours of the morning to get my championship swag.  But I will also comment on beautiful swings, throws, and catches.  I can name a player's stats at the drop of a hat (mostly) and I will talk to you about my teams' history when we fail to win a championship, but I will also talk about my teams' history when we do win a championship.

My sport is baseball and my team is the Boston Red Sox.  And yes, I am a pre-2004 Red Sox fan :)  I played softball for thirteen years, and I will dissect every play made during a game.  And my VERY close second is football, and my team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.  I didn't grow up in Pittsburgh, but my dad did, so I grew up watching the Steelers and fell in love with the sport.  Also, downhill skiing is one of my favourite sports to watch, and I will be glued to the TV for hours watching and cheering and comparing my skiing to that of the professionals (not very comparable, though).  Also guys, THE OLYMPICS START IN T-MINUS THREE DAYS.

Here are multiple struggles female sports fans know all too well:

Being asked if I'm trying to impress the male population

Having a guy try to explain the game to you after multiple assurances that you know what's actually going on

Two words: PINK JERSEYS

Do I think a lot of sports are violent?  Yes.  Does that deter me from loving them?  Absolutely not.

Keep cheering, female sports fans!  GO SPORTS.

Thanks for reading!

Kim