The Hit of the Day

Today I participated in Greece Apollo's Non-Traditional Occupations Day for girls. It was so much fun! The day began with a keynote speech about financial independence by Kitty Van Bortel (of Van Bortel Subaru), which was a really great talk and very inspiring. We then participated in a "What's My Line?" like game for the girls. Each of the 9 women (I was #3) stood up and read a little riddle, from which the girls were supposed to guess what occupation we each represented. My riddle was:

The best part of my job is the variety I encounter,
If I wasn’t good at math my job would be a downer.

My day is filled with physics, engineering, and geometry,
While working with megapixels, CMOS, and CCD.

You can see my work on the computer screen,
But my team remains in the lab, unseen.

Clever, right? (I didn't write it, but I supplied a wealth of terms to use.) The 9 of us represented a scientist; a gas line technician; imaging scientist; civil engineer; cook; police detective; plumber; playground builder; and a firewoman - so we made up a really nice variety of jobs both intellectual and physical. After we all read our riddles, we each announced who we were and had a chance to describe what we do, what got us into our careers, advice for the girls, etc. This was all a lot of fun and resulted in many cheers and applause!

From here we moved into separate classrooms to perform skills exercises. There were 10 groups of about 15 girls each, and we were given 12 minutes with each group to describe what we do and give the girls an exercise to perform: for example, the cook was having them participate in a cooking demonstration; the firefighters had the girls try on fire resistant suits; etc. I took the FLIR thermal infrared camera, explained how it worked and what it was used for, and then we got to play around in front of the camera. Volunteers were given stickers with the Platypus Seal of Approval, which were a huge hit!

Always a classic.

The girls had a lot of fun - This was one of my most favorite groups! (A couple of these girls even said they wanted to BE me - sucking up is always a plus.)

She's been APPROVED!

The skills booth portion of the day is always such an experience. First of all, doing a 12 minute demonstration 10 times over can be very draining! But what always surprises me the most is the variety of groups I get. Most groups of girls are AMAZING, but then there are always one or two that are problematic, which is unavoidable. In one of my groups there was a down right clique of bullies, who started to pick on the somewhat shy girl who was the only one of the group that had the guts to volunteer to go in front of the camera. Not only was this unacceptable in and of itself, but their bad attitudes were discouraging the rest of the group from participating or showing and interest whatsoever. This is something I absolutely have no patience for.

If you pick on the volunteers, you are automatically the next volunteer (but no sticker for you!). However, they refused to cooperate and were willing to ruin the experience of the rest of the group, despite the requests both from my myself and their teacher chaperon. After a staring contest, the solution became simple: I turned the camera on them.

My classroom, my rules. Tough love: Bethany style.

They didn't appreciate this very much. But I think my brave first volunteer did. (And I suppose the photographer must have too since she took a picture of the event.) There will be no bullying going down when Sheriff Bethany's in town.

Meanwhile this did nothing to dampen my mood on the day. After we made it through all 10 groups we were treated to a pizza lunch (always a bonus!) and then were each presented flowers and a certificate of appreciation, all to grand applause. According to several organizers as well as fellow presenters, I was told on several separate occasions that the Imaging Science demonstration was the hit of the day - apparently the girls couldn't stop talking about it after they left! (Who knew - I was afraid I couldn't live up to the cook or the fire fighter.) Hopefully being a part of this day will help raise interest in Imaging Science at RIT and encourage young girls to keep taking math and science in high school.

Overall the event was a great success and I am proud to have participated! The Greece Apollo NTO day is a great opportunity for the students, and I wish more schools had the resources to be able to put together additional events like this one. I look forward to being a part of it again next year!

Up next: An Evening of Career Exploration at Gates Chili, later tonight...