A Smashing Start to My Career:

You just can't take me anywhere. I decided to be bold and attend a forum at York University that was organized by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers and the Women in Engineering Advisory Council. My motivation for going was the fact that Bob McDonald was the keynote speaker. I thought, "Hey, it may be at 9:30 in the morning on a Saturday, but damn, it's Bob McDonald! I'm NOT going to be bored!" Oh, you don't know who Bob McDonald is? He used to host Wonderstruck on CBC, and now he has a CBC Radio program called Quirks and Quarks. I saw him speak once at Waterloo, and he was great. He didn't even major in anything science related, but he can talk about the subject in a way that anybody can understand, and he's really funny.

Back to my story. The talk was held in one of those typical university lecture halls, with the retractable little table things on the sides of the chairs. Now, these were less stable than what I was used to, and it serves me right for trying to save the environment and use a ceramic coffee cup instead of the available paper cups. Yes, that's right, I readjusted the table and the next thing I knew the cup and saucer were headed for the floor. The room became silent for two seconds, and I could feel every single eye on me as I bent down to pick up the pieces. One of the organizing ladies came around to make sure I hadn't also injured myself with hot coffee or sharp edges or something, which made the whole experience complete. And all this before the session even began.

Embarrassing moments aside, it was a nice little seminar. The ratio was approximately 6 guys to 40 women (but if you don't count Bob and the president of the society, then the ratio was a little closer to what I was expecting). Bob did a similar presentation to the one I had seen, but that was okay. The panel discussion was okay, it focused a lot on the typical "how do we get more girls to join the profession?" and "how do we guys to treat us equally?" Some good points were made, but nothing groundbreaking. The networking lunch was much more fun. I was at a table where pretty much everyone was a Chemmie, except one girl who was a Civ. I got some really good job search advice, and met some interesting ladies. And the food was good, which made it all worthwhile. I'm thinking I should really start to go to more of these events.

And who knew that York has an engineering program now?

"If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy, well I deserve nothing more than I get cos nothing I have is truly mine"