Today’s been one of those days where I’ve barely felt like I’ve been able to tread water. It’s been one meeting after the next, with an unusually high number of phone calls from random people asking questions that, truth be told, they should already know the answer to — not that I’m complaining, mind you, because the easiest part of my job is answering the easy or obvious questions.
My favorite call today? Someone called me from one of our academic programs to ask if I’d added information about their new degree program to their homepage. Without being asked to. Just ’cause I felt like it. My response? “Oh! You have a new degree program?” I mean, honestly, like *I* have time to find out these things, unilaterally go into someone’s site and add stuff without telling or asking them first? Riiiiiiiiiight.
I started the day off right by getting an e-mail from my boss approving my request to buy a 21″ Samsung LCD monitor for work … currently, I have a pathetically small 17″ CRT (in an office where everyone else has those gorgeous 23″ Apple cinema displays, damn them). I wasted no time getting the purchase order paperwork started for the 21″ jobber. I couldn’t be more pleased.
Then at noon, I was slated to give a 45-minute talk to some 8th- and 9th-grade girls on campus for a two-week summer program designed to encourage them to stay in math and science classes. There were about 25 girls and I was armed with a list of questions to answer — mostly having to do with my job, my educational background, how to get into the field, what opportunities and challenges exist, and so forth. I was all prepared to launch into a talk about my job … but honestly, anyone who’s ever been in a room where I’m giving a talk (or teaching) knows the last thing I want to do is stand up and start lecturing. I’ve never liked sitting through lectures (unless it’s by someone who’s genuinely interesting, and those people are few and far between), and I certainly don’t want to be that boring crazy person who inflicts sleep-inducing monotony on a room full of otherwise energetic and enthusiastic young people.
So I get there and launch into my little spiel, and notice after 10 or 15 minutes of polite listening that most of the girls have completely glazed over. And honestly, who could blame them?
At that point, I paused and asking, “What do you want to know? Anything about Web stuff? College? Working? Boys? Dealing with your parents?”
They giggled, and one girl towards the back nervously raised her hand. “Are you married?” was her question.
Another tentative hand. “What do your parents do?”
That’s when I seriously switched gears and started telling them more of my personal story. How I first got online at Governor’s School — how I never thought *I’d* be one of those geeks hanging out in the computer lab … until I realized it meant I could chat with French boys. How I was one of the first people in my small hometown who was online, how I became an Internet evangelist at the age of 16, how I used to dial in to send e-mail twice a week because it was a long-distance call to Springfield, Mo., just to get online.
They seemed to connect then … they started asking more questions about college, scholarships, and other things. I talked a bit about my philosophies of life — hell, I had a captive audience, why not? — like my fundamental belief that you only regret in life those things you don’t do, and never those things you try but fail. I don’t know how I did it — because I swear, I totally didn’t plan ahead of time to do so — but I completely brought everything (even the chatting with French boys on the Internet) full circle at the end, and the girls left me feeling like maybe, just maybe, I managed to reach out to a few of them and at least entertained them, if not give them information that would be helpful later.
I offered my business cards up if they were interested in taking one and e-mailing or calling sometime … I didn’t expect many would, but more of them took one than not, so that felt pretty affirming.
I don’t know if the people running the camp will do any sort of evaluation and let me know how they liked my short talk, but I hope they will … I would like to know. I’ve never aspired to teach that age group — I much prefer working with college students at the youngest — but it was an enjoyable experience and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, if asked. 🙂
pretty cool liz… you can be the unsung catalust of thousands of female computer dorks everywhere! well done!!! by the way…you like frnench boys? who knew? i may have to work on that with you….
What an awesome story about talking to those young girls, Liz. Just imagine…you may have very well touched someone's life that day. That's an amazing thing, when you think about it.