Cook Something Hard Results

1) January - CrockPot cooking (I wrote a blog about this one)

2) February - Saffron Lamb - I made this fancy dish for Valentine's day, and it was delicious but expensive! I have not used the saffron I bought for it since.

3) March - Checkerboard Cake - I made this for Ryan's birthday and learned that angelfood cake is a terrible choice for this - it's impossible to cut!

4) April - DIY Celery Pickles - this was surprisingly easy, and delicious in egg salad!

5) May - Broiled Hawaiian Chicken - I spent some time trying to learn the difference between bake and broil in order to make dinner on mother's day

6) June - DIY BBQ sauce - I followed a recipe for beer sauce and made some tweaks to the sodium content

7) July - Quiche - I totally burned this one. But it was tasty!

8) August - Fried Plantains - This was so outside of my comfort zone but ended up being super easy and now I make them all the time!

9) Sept - Spaghetti Squash - Definitely an experience to cook this veggie. It's SO yummy though! Don't get fooled - it doesn't sub for pasta, but is good all on it's own

10) Oct - Butternut Squash soup - Ryan didn't like this :( But I also did roasted squash which he liked better - the carrots in the soup was what he really didn't like!

11) November - Pecan Pie - this one was a special request from Ryan for thanksgiving...and I burned it. My reputation with pies is not so great right now!

12) December - for a co-worker who doesn't eat sugar, I learned some baking science in order to make sugar-free banana nut muffins. They were a big hit! :)

When you say goodbye, what taste do you leave?

Yesterday, someone I work with left his job to go to another company. And while I understand why he's making that choice for his career and I think it's the right choice for him and I wish him the best, I'm processing a little bit how you say goodbye to someone that you've seen almost every day, and then your contact with them just...stops.

It doesn't really stop, I suppose - I am still able to reach out to him as needed, but the nature of how we interact fundamentally changes when he's working for another organization.

It's not like this is a new experience for me - at the end of every summer internship I've had, I had to say goodbye to the people who I worked with and saw everyday, and at graduation, I had to say goodbye to classmates I had been with for years. And with all of them, the nature of our relationship somehow changed. I still saw them, I was still happy for them when they got married, but something changed. Experiencing this before doesn't make it feel different, or feel easier, to say goodbye to someone. It's still a bittersweet experience.

At the end of the farewell luncheon for my co-worker, there was a long line of people waiting to shake his hand and say their few words - and three women (one of them me) who got (*cough*, asked for) hugs instead of handshakes. And yes, that was special, and I'm glad I got my hug...but that was it.

I know, from those previous experiences, that this feeling will go away and that my job will stay pretty much exactly the same. But it still feels weird, and I still feel like I should capture it somehow. Sometimes, people go out of your life and come back into them later, sometimes, people go out of your life without your even realizing that they're leaving. But moments like these - abrupt endings - make you think about how many people are in your life, how many lives you touch, and what message you may be leaving with them about you, what motivates you, how you work, etc. When you walk out of their life, how will they remember you? what taste will you leave behind?

Some Gender Observations at Work

This week has been interesting for me in terms of the STEM gender gap - so much so that I feel like I need to write up my observations. Though I have been aware of the STEM gender gap since I decided to go into a STEM degree in 10th grade, I still don't know how to approach it sometimes, or how to educate others about why the STEM gender gap matters (not to mention the STEM race gap). Diversity and the impact of diverse teams is a hard concept to really describe, and the emotions surrounding it are so complex.

1) The Impact of Age

An interesting impact of age is that for men 40 and over, it's hard for them to recognize me (the 23 year old female) as a peer. For some, it's because their daughters are "just a few" years younger than I am (where "just a few" is 6-8 years, when their daughters are in high school). This does not happen to my male counterparts - they don't look at them and get reminded of their sons. I'm not sure why this happens, but it's extremely interesting and has a big impact from a work perspective - it's much easier to talk to someone as a peer when they don't remind you of your child at home.

Also, before you all say I'm imagining it, people have flat out told me "you remind me of my daughter" or "my daughter is a lot like you" and then proceeded to act accordingly. One of my supervisors literally patted me on the head once (he didn't mean for it to be weird, but I flipped out a little bit). Approaching those you supervise as though you are approaching a child is funny sometimes, but more often harmful, and it's my hypothesis (though I can't prove this) that women are more likely to be approached as a child than men.

Now, I'm fully willing to admit that some of the problem is me and how I present myself - I want to be told what to do and tend to speak about myself and my experiences with level of uncertainty that I don't see in my male counterparts. I'm often afraid of being told that I'm "too aggressive" and therefore I act in a non-threatening manner - which leads to my being seen as "young" and therefore treated somewhat with a parent/child relationship. And I know, none of these guys are doing it on purpose and would be upset if they knew that sometimes I feel as though they treat me that way (this is why I'm part of the problem). But still, it's super interesting. 

2) The 'Strength in Numbers' concept at Meetings

Today, I went to three meetings. In each of the meetings, I was the only female. One was a lunch with a high school mentor student (1/2 ratio) one was a project weekly status meeting (1/8 ratio) and one was a brainstorming session for new work (1/6 ratio). In each of these meetings, I was fairly quiet, and I prefaced most of my comments with "Well, I think" or "Well, I don't have X but based on what I do know, Y" or something along those lines. All the things I said, I prefaced with something that, in the event I was wrong, covered my bases so I could say "well, I wasn't certain".

I've also attended three all-female meetings in the past two weeks (not today, because the all-female meetings are fewer and further between). In those meetings, I speak with confidence and act on my experiences without hesitation. Part of this is because I am just more confident speaking to women, but another piece is that if there's another woman in the room, I'm less likely to feel judged for my opinion. Knowing that you're not the only one out there - it's a real thing, and it helps.

3) The Funny End Note

Now, before you go away all depressed about the gender gap in STEM, here's a funny ending note about gender differences - It is easier for guys to just wear a funny or nerdy t-shirt, and call it a Halloween costume. Case in point - on Friday, Oct. 30th, my project manager was wearing a star trek t shirt, and getting away with calling it a costume. His boss (a woman) was wearing a full on pink bunny suit. Another guy was wearing a Darth Vader jacket, while a different woman was wearing a Minnie Mouse dress, gloves, and ears. It's so much harder to dress up for Halloween as a female (especially in a work appropriate way)! I demand equality in Halloween costumes! (just kidding). 

The point my boss made was this - no one expects a guy to make an effort in his appearance, so remembering to put a geek t-shirt on in the morning is quite an accomplishment. Since women are already known for taking time to look good, more is expected from their costumes. Which I guess I can accept.

Anyways, I'm interested in hearing your take on gender gaps where you work - especially those of you who work in female-dominated jobs where the males are the minority!