Science Conference. It was really fun, and the girls (middle school)
seemed to really enjoy the hands on activity we did: using
silly-putty-like-stuff to model how glaciers flow. I definitely lost
some of them when I went over the introductory info, but the actual
activity turned out great. I went to the presenter lunch afterward,
and I talked to some other women who presented. One of them was a
veterinarian who brought her puppy in and had them do a small experiment
with cat blood. Apparently there are two types of cat blood, A & B, and
one of them is pretty rare. If you give a transfusion of the common
blood to a cat with the rare blood type, the blood actually congeals and
will end up killing the cat, which sounds pretty awful. You can
apparently see this happen in lab samples. Other than that being kind
of gross, she had them give a physical to her puppy, who apparently
really enjoyed the attention.
My rant for the day: Another woman did pharmacy and complained about how
the last session (there were 3 hour long sessions) had girls who just
didn't seem interested at all. She didn't have anything hands on, just
a worksheet, and these girls had just been inundated with so much
information, I'm sure they were kind of burned out. But she took it a
little too personally. A couple (not a majority, by any seems) seemed
almost offended by things like bringing in a puppy and some of the other
tricks people used to make their sessions fun and exciting. Like
somehow makings things fun and appealing dumbs down the science. I was
kind of annoyed because these are middle schoolers who get only an hour
with you. Of course, you should make it fun! It's not for a grade, and
it's not deciding their careers, so why not bring the puppies and have
gratuitous explosions or other "sexy" science elements? There are
plenty of other opportunities to get into esoteric details about a given
science, so I don't really see the need to impose it upon 11-14 year
olds.
I obviously didn't race on Saturday, as I was doing the science thing,
and racing didn't happen on Sunday, period. Next week will be my first
race of the season, probably Sequim instead of Mason. But, I did get my
bike social life in, as I went to the MVA auction. I ended up with a
gift card for 2 60 minute massages from the silent auction. And Chris
got a handmade quilt that is gorgeous and fairly intricate. I got some
trainer time in on Sunday, which is really getting old. I really hope
this coming weekend holds better weather.
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