Responsibility

Since moving away from the engineer heavy zone of Cambridge, Massachusetts, or as I often refer to it, Boston, I've had to make more of an effort to socialize with engineers. (No laughing about engineers socializing by the non-engineers out there!) At any rate, I joined the local SWE chapter and have attended several events.

And like any group that has a new mark to practice their con on, they've joined forces and directed them at me. I've agreed to run for section secretary. I've mentioned about 40 times that I don't want to lead or organize anything. I want to show up, do my task, and go home. We'll see how it works out but so far everyone seems ecstatic that I might be joining the mothership in the command room. Of course, once I show up, I offer my opinion which might make people less than ecstatic, because we all know I have a tough time keeping my trap shut.

We had the section's five year anniversary dinner last night and had a lot of local female students come to get awards for various science related achievements. A LOT of students. That was pretty great to see so many girls doing science fair projects and whatnot. The city of Ventura sponsored us by allowing us to use their city hall atrium space for the event. Being a very high ceilinged area filled with light and carved stone added a nice air of gravity to the dinner. And allowed us to play with balloons in the "construct the tallest centerpiece" event.

All in all, it went well for our first big event, and there were many things we learned to improve for next time. And I have a lot of opinions about that, so I can only guess how much control I'll want to seize in the future despite my intent not to do any such thing. Like trying to rename the national group to "Society of Women in Engineering" or "Society of Female Engineers". Because on the whole, "female" is an adjective and "woman" is a noun. And this trend to say "the first woman X" is driving me nuts which just makes it ironic that I went out and paid good money to join a group which actively promotes this annoying trend in common usage.