Tuesday, April 29, 2008

"Old girls network"

In preparing for my faculty position interview (see post below), I got a lot of great help and advice from both male and female mentors in my field. The best help I got though, was from a young female professor who is committed to establishing and participating in an "old girls network" to help women succeed in science (and academia in particular). Although we live > 1000 miles apart, she called me and went through my seminar slides in great detail, and really helped me see the differences between a technical research seminar and an interview seminar.
I am pointing this out because 1. it was awesome and 2. I feel that despite the competitive nature of academia, people have really been bending over backwards to help me out.
I am also committed to the idea of this "old girls network" and am eager to pass on what I have learned.
In addition, I have realized that a lot of the big dreams/goals and ambitions of my youth have come to fruition. Basically, I have done a lot of what I set out to do. I am in a period where I am developing new goals and dreams, and it is now occurring to me, especially as I consider a faculty position, that it would be great to have some of my new goals and dreams shaped and inspired by students (hopefully including female students), because I will soon be in a position where I can help out by creating exciting research opportunities, etc, as my mentors did for me.

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