Throwback Thursday: Sally Ride

I don't recall why or where I read it this week, but I once again heard the statement (unsure if proven fact) that, before her one week long space mission, NASA engineers asked Sally Ride if 100 tampons were the right number. So now I got Sally Ride on my mind and decided to learn more about her for this week's Throwback Thursday!

Also of note, when verifying the above I found the following link and I really enjoyed the quote from Ann Friedman while talking about Sally Ride: "to be first is to relinquish the complicated specifics of your story and become a caricature, a stand-in for the ideals of a movement or for the hope and pain of a moment in history." I'm sure many of my Throwback Thursday ladies could relate to that statement!

Sally Ride was born May 26, 1951 in Los Angeles, California. She was fascinated by science, and credited her parents for encouraging her interests. She attended the private Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles and was a nationally ranked tennis player. After high school, Ride attended Swarthmore College for three semesters, then took physics courses as UCLA, and finally entered Standford University as a junior. While at Stanford, she earned a Bachelor's Degree in English, and a Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D in Physics.

In 1977, while Sally was earning her Ph.D at Stanford, NASA began looking for women astronauts. She saw an ad in the school newspaper inviting scientists and engineers, including women, to apply to the astronaut program and decided to apply... along with 8,000 other people. 35 new astronauts were chosen, including Ride and 5 other women. In 1979, Ride became eligible for assignment as an astronaut on a space shuttle flight crew after a yearlong training and evaluation period. And then on June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the shuttle Challenger. (Preceded only by two Soviet women, the first all the way back in 1963!)

Aboard the Challenger, Ride's job was to work the robotic arm, which she used to help put satellites into space. Prior to the mission, Ride was asked questions such as "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job" at a press conference, yet she insisted that, despite the historical significance of her presence on the mission, she only saw herself as a fellow astronaut.

Her second space flight, also on board the Challenger, was in 1984. Ride had completed eight months of training for her third flight when the space shuttle Challenger disaster occurred, halting the mission. Ride served on the Presidential Commission to investigate the tragedy and, according to General Donald Kutyna after Ride's death, provided Kutyna with key information about O-rings which led to the identification of the cause of the explosion. Ride retired from NASA in 1987 with 343 hours in space.

After NASA, Ride first worked at Standford University Center for International Security and Arms Control, and then became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute. Ride was a long time advocate for improved science education, and co-wrote seven science books for children. She also led two public-outreach programs for NASA, the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects, which allowed middle school students to request images of the Earth and moon.

In 2001, she co-founded Sally Ride Science, a company that creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls. She served as the president and CEO until her passing.

Sally Ride died on July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, seventeen months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After her death, her obituary revealed that her partner of 27 years was Tam O'Shaughnessy who co-founded Sally Ride Science and currently serves as the CEO. O'Shaughnessy was also the co-author of six of the previously mentioned book. Sally chose to keep her relationship and other details of her life private during her lifetime, but with this revelation she also becomes the first known LGBT astronaut.

Among many other tributes, Sally Ride was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. On November 20, 2013, Ride received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. The medal was presented to her life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy, in the presence of Sally's mother and sister. In 2014, Ride was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.

Finally, I found some quotes attributed to Sally Ride that I would like to leave you with:

"I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear to me that I was one. And I began to understand the importance of that to people. Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can't be what you can't see."

"If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys."

"I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job."

"I would like to be remembered as someone who was not afraid to do what she wanted to do, and as someone who took risks along the way in order to achieve her goals."

I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sally_ride.html

I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sally_ride.html

References:

http://gizmodo.com/nasa-engineers-offered-sally-ride-100-tampons-for-a-7-d-1594243379
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-sally-ride-k4.html
https://sallyridescience.com/about/dr-sally-ride
http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-secret-life-of-sally-ride-the-first-american-woman-1586255004

Woman Crush Wednesday: My Story

In addition to Throwback Thursday, I would like to start featuring more modern women who are actively doing things. And first and foremost, every woman should have a woman crush on herself, right? This week I shared my story with BSGU's Let Girls Learn initiative.

BSGU (Bowling Green State University) Let Girls Learn (link here) is "a theatre class project aimed at raising awareness about girls' education around the world. As part of our 'take action' campaign, we hope to share the stories of young women from around the world who have experienced successes and/or barriers to their education. We are looking for women willing to tell of their experience through video and written forms."

And Let Girls Learn (link here) is a United States government initiative to ensure adolescent girls around the world get the education they deserve. Launched by the President and First Lady in March 2015, Let Girls Learn "brings together the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), as well as other agencies and programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to address the range of challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining a quality education that empowers them to reach their full potential. Let Girls Learn combines the necessary political will, diplomacy, grassroots organizing, and development expertise to create lasting change."

This is my face. I took this picture while visiting my college campus recently for a weekend event, and joked about there finally being more women than men on the Electrical and Computer Engineering floor... because no one else was there.

The story I provided to BSGU Let Girls Learn:

My name is Lauren, and I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Fairly conservative area, but despite that no one in my family or in my school fed me any of the stereotypes associated with being a woman in engineering. I just knew I liked math better than English, so I took the AP math and AP physics courses. For AP Physics in particular, I did notice that there were more boys in the class than girls, but didn't really think about it. In my junior year, the AP Physics teacher had the opportunity to send some students for free to an engineering camp at Widener University. Some male and some female students were selected, myself included, and I have no memory of the camp putting any focus on gender. There were definitely male and female students in all of my classes, there wasn't any special seminar for the girls, and everyone had fun and learned things and made friends.

At that camp I had the most fun building circuits, so I decided to go to college for Electrical Engineering (which, at Lafayette College, ended up being Electrical and Computer Engineering). The ONLY inkling I had before starting college that my chosen path was abnormal was my father saying "this is what you want to do?" while taking a tour.

But then I got to college and oh man, was I an anomaly. I was the only female ECE student in my year, and there were no females the year above me and no females the year below me. For someone who is very shy and likes to fade into the background, this was a bit uncomfortable. It's kind of hard to hide when you are the only person on the entire floor with boobs. I definitely got discouraged while at school (and still do at my web developer job) when I couldn't figure something out, because I felt like (and feel like) I'm proving a point about my gender. Whereas if one of the guys struggles, it only reflects him.

Me being the only girl on the floor (and even today, one of the few females in my company) definitely forced me to develop a thick skin. Not that anyone was mean, but more that they didn't realize how an easy joke could make me second guess myself. Like joking that I didn't belong in Computer Engineering because I didn't play video games like the rest of them. It's true. I don't fit the stereotype. The few females that were Computer Science majors blended in more. They played video games, they wore jeans and t-shirts, they watched shows like Archer and Adventure Time... I wear dresses. My laptop is pink. My favorite shows are New Girl and The Mindy Project. I haven't played a video or computer game since middle school. But none of that has anything to do with my ability to code.

If I had known going into it that my very existence in this computer science world would be such an event, I'm not sure I would have done it. I didn't want to be the center of attention. I didn't want to have to make sure to be in the lab during Saturday tours so they could show people I existed. But if I could do it all over again, I still would. I've had to grow a lot as a person, which was good for me.

But I fear that other girls are discouraged from even entering this coding world because they don't fit the part. So I'm trying to do MY part to change the narrative. Still figuring out the details of the "how", but I did start my Facebook and Instagram: it's Had Me @ Hello World (@hadmeathelloworld). To show that you can watch romantic comedies by night and develop software by day!