I recently gave a talk at TEDxJHU on the theme of Instructions Not Included. I think the theme is an apt metaphor for life and for how cuSTEMized came to be.
cuSTEMized started because I wanted to give something to the 2nd grade students I was teaching at the time to encourage them in STEM. But I didn’t want any generic message. I wanted a targeted, personalized message that I believe in YOU. I want YOU to continue experimenting, exploring, and learning.
I wanted to make a personalized story for each of them. Using their name. And their appearance. Well, that was the idea. So how were we going to get the graphics? We’ll draw it. So what’s the story going to be? We’ll write it. So how were we going to code this up? We’ll figure it out. No one ever told us how to do this. No one ever gave us permission to do this. At the same time, no one ever told us we couldn’t. We put together what qualifications and skills we had. Where we lacked, we asked for help. Where we couldn’t find good help, we figured things out ourselves.
That’s what STEM has taught us: we can always put our heads together and figure things out. That’s why I believe STEM to be so powerful. Not every girl needs to be a scientist, but every girl, every person, should be empowered with the critical thinking skills that STEM teaches us. Because when we empower our girls with both the skills and confidence to create, they will create a brighter future.
My talk was titled “Do art like a science! Do science like an art” and I discussed how I combined my artistic and scientific skills to make cuSTEMized. My message was simply that we all have a unique set of skills that can be used to create the change that we would like to see. I really hope that we inspire someone, somewhere, to create something.
Congrats again to all the organizing for pulling off a spectacular event. I’ll plan on sharing the video of my talk once it comes out
My Scientific Name
