As a Teaching Assistant, I get to hear the opinion of a lot of professors. One particular professor commented to a class the reason why you should choose Mechanical Engineering as a degree, and reasons why you should not. Every reason he listed was a reason I chose this path for school. “Mechanical engineering is not for if you want to work with your hands. It’s not for if you want to be an astronaut. It’s not for you if you dislike math.”

My first step towards a career I’ll love is to completely ignore his “rules” for this degree.

Maybe NASA isn’t looking for engineers as astronauts. But even if I can’t go into space myself, I want to work and help place people up where I can’t go. Every person I help launch is putting me one step closer to my own dream. Maybe I won’t put a footprint on the surface of Mars personally, but if I can say I helped put them there, that’ll be fine enough for me. Because once one person makes it, more will follow, and that foothold is all I want.

Next is making people see the beauty of these endeavors.

Space will be a team effort. I’m not able to make a rocket on my own, launch it, colonize Mars. We’ll need biologists, technicians, doctors, on top of the engineers and physicists and astronomers. People don’t see space travel for the beautiful thing it is, they don’t see the possibilities. But if I can show them, if I can inspire one person, that’s one more person on my team. And that’s all I need to start. I’m studying Chinese, and someday Russian, because astronauts are the very definition of global. They can see how little borders or differences matter. None of those do matter when you’re orbiting our little rock, and staring down at it makes you realize how small we all are, how little we mean individually but how much we can achieve together.

And last, the final step on this long arduous path, is just not losing the fun.

I spent Saturday’s watching Star Trek with my dad. We’d spend holidays out with a telescope and peanut butter sandwiches while he pointed out the constellations. This yearning for something more, to do something out there, to explore, I’ve always had it, and I know that deep down I always will. That bad calculus test grade might be a little discouraging, and some professors might have strong opinions that can make me second guess myself. But as long as I always come back to that happiness, that core that has always been with me, there’s no reason I can’t reach that dream.

My dream might seem a little impractical, unattainable, I have my head in the clouds. Too perfect, impossible, unrealistic, but I like to think the journey and the small victories along the way are what make a field like space exploration worth it. And I’m loving every step of the way.

This creative plan is a submission for the JonesTshirts.com "Love Your Career" scholarship.

Now You're Thinking With Portals

Video Games have to be one of the coolest results of the past thirty years. We've gone from Pong to Skyrim, with a huge spectrum in between. And where do girls fit into all this? Besides making up more than half the audience that plays the games, they make them too. Some of the best selling games were made by women.
  

And this is where Kim Swift comes in.

For her senior project in college, she and a group of other students created a game called Narbacular Drop. Doesn't sound familiar? How about Portal? Valve saw her work and hired her to revamp it into one of their most popular games ever. Over 4 million copies have been sold since it's release in 2007, and was considered one of the most original games of the year.

Kim has also worked on Left for Dead and Half Life, though she left Valve in 2009. She joined with Airtight games to create a new puzzle game called Quantum Conundrum that she hopes will appeal to a wider audience than just hardcore gamers. For her, games are supposed to be entirely separate from reality. "That's what's fun about games—you get to live a weird fantasy."

There are plenty of more girls in the gaming industry, more programmers and players and artists than I can name. But we'll save those for another day. Comment question: What's your favorite game to play? Shooter, puzzle, RPG?

Sources:
Spectrum Profile
Giant Bomb
PC Magazine

To Kickstart This Blog

Do you like robots? Dr. Cynthia Breazeal from MIT certainly does. But not your typical, automatronic robots. She wants intelligent ones, the kind of robot that can think and interact with people on an emotional level that is on par with human babies.

Her first robot was a huge clunky thing named Cog, who was being designed in the mid-nineties by MIT to resemble human activity, like following something in motion with its cameras. During the process, Dr. Breazeal was struck with the idea of making a robot even more human. One that could react and respond to facial movements, tone of voice, and relay similar interactions to the person. After long years of research and construction, she debuted Kismet to the world in the late nineties.

This funky looking guy is Kismet. He's only a head, but with expressive pieces that had never been on a robot before. His eyebrows, mouth, and ears could all waggle to indicate various expressions and emotions. To make him learn like an infant, Cynthia gave him three basic functions: the desire to interact with people, the desire to play with brightly colored toys, and the need to rest.

He was a big hit, and she used what she learned to make better versions. Now she has all kinds of cool stuff going on. There's something that looks like a Furby and a teddy bear and this really cool doll. And that's just the start. She plans on continuing to work on robots for as long as she can.

I have to admit, I like her a lot more than some other scientists. Why? She's from New Mexico (like me!), loves to read science fiction, and her favorite movie robots are R2-D2 and C-3PO. Is that cool or what?

Sources:
MIT Profile
TED Talk Profile
PBS Nova Profile

Welcome, denizens of the internet

In ninth grade, I got my first real taste of science and math. Nothing too serious, just biology for freshmen, but it was amazing all the things that went with it. That was also the year I took my first engineering course. It was the last period of the day, and I could not wait to get started that first day of school. Imagine my terror and embarrassment, when I walk into a full classroom and see only two other girls.

Two girls. Plus me. And I heard there was only one other in the whole program. For a second, I thought of leaving, of going into something like creative writing or another art class. But I didn't. And I was glad. It wasn't the best of classes, and the majority of the room spent more time playing Counter Strike than actually drafting assignments, but I realized I was good at it. It was the perfect combination of math and reality and drawing to make me happy.

The years have gone by, and I am getting ready to graduate from high school soon. My favorite class this senior year? Physics, followed closely by my statistics and calculus classes. And I am glad to report that there are more than just four girls in those classes. I want to share my love with you, the girls who stay home to watch Stephen Hawking on the Discovery Channel or who know the exact probability of getting that same classes as your friends. The girls who keep the high scores in the online leader boards and who go to Comicon every year.

We have more people to look up to than Marie Curie, as this xkcd comic so eloquently explains, and it's about time we realized all the awesome stuff that happens, because of women. And this won't just be science. Comics, video games, internet sensations, contemporary artists, anything even remotely geeky or traditionally man territory will be discussed here. I hope you stick around for the ride.