"Inspire a generation"

This motto for the London 2012 Olympics seems like the perfect title for a blog post about how I won the amazing opportunity to attend the Games.  My once-in-a-lifetime trip is being paid for by my company, GlaxoSmithKline, which also happens to be the "Official Laboratory Services Provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games".

Back in January, GSK set up an internal contest for employees to nominate their co-workers for the opportunity to win a pair of Golden Tickets to the London 2012 Olympics.  In 150 words or less, the person submitting the nomination had to describe how the nominee demonstrates a set of ideals associated with the Olympics, namely Integrity, Friendship, Equality and Excellence.

One of my colleagues (who I won't name in case he doesn't want the publicity) decided that nominating me for this competition would be a great way to recognize the way he sees me model these behaviors both inside and outside work.  One day in early January, he asked me to come by his office to talk.  When I arrived, he said that he had seen the contest on the GSK website and wanted to nominate me to win the Golden Tickets.  I was stunned that someone would take the time to nominate me, much less when that person had no vested interest in me winning the competition.  He offered to let me see the nomination before it was submitted to help him make it as clear and powerful as possible. Having kept up with my PULSE assignment and having watched the activities I started up or joined after I returned, it was difficult for him to condense down his thoughts to the 150-word limit.  But after a few iterations, we arrived at the text below:


Building Relationships to Advance Science in GSK and Around the World

Michelle Wobker has a passion for science and engineering and a desire to give back outside of GSK. She is recognized for her excellent contributions to R&D projects through her role as an accomplished Chemical Engineer and her strong teamwork and people skills. She mentors college women through GSK Women in Science Scholars program. Last year as a PULSE volunteer in Ghana, Michelle trained middle school teachers to use the Internet to find relevant science and math lessons and to build sustained partnerships with US teachers. Since then, she led the launch of RTP Science in Schools, which supports GSK employees in sharing science in the community, and is on the Board of Advisors for Give Back Africa Foundation, a non-profit started by a fellow GSK employee. Through these activities, she is improving learning and development opportunities for less-advantaged children. She is a strong believer in people, the power of appreciation, and the value of a simple thank you.

I was truly surprised that he had noticed these activities, especially since I participate in these endeavors not to be recognized for them but out a sincere desire to make a difference in the world.


The efforts put into writing up this nomination must have touched someone on the reviewing committee for on a day in late March, I received an email telling me that I was one of the select few to have won a pair of Golden Tickets.  I read the email a few times to make sure that the 36-point font of the email really did declare me to be a winner.  My next move was to head upstairs and thank the guy who nominated me.  (Side note: I'm still trying to figure out what to bring back for him.  Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.)

Over the next few months, the team organizing the winner's trips contacted me to sort out travel details and to let me know that LJ and I would be attending Women's Beach Vollyeball and Men's Basketball Preliminaries.  Unfortunately, it looks like we'll miss Team USA, but I'm not sure that it really matters to me.  Just experiencing the Olympics is a phenomenal opportunity.  I am incredibly thankful to both the unnamed co-worker and my company for giving me this trip.  I'm sure that I'll have a million memories to share from this Bucket-List-worthy trip.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Not the guy in those Dos Equis commercials.  The most interesting man in the world is Neil deGrasse Tyson, the coolest astrophysicist ever (no offense to Brian Cox or Stephen Hawking).  As described on the NC Science Festival listing of his event, he's the current director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, as well as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He's currently working on the sequel to Carl Sagan’s award-winning television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.  The reason that I really respect and idolize him is that he is both a great researcher and a great communicator, spending much of his time trying to improve science literacy in the US.

Last week I had the great fortune to spend "An Evening with Neil deGrasse Tyson", which was the name of his talk that he gave at UNC Chapel Hill during the NC Science Festival.  He spoke about "Ten Things that Everyone Should Know About the Universe".  Upon arriving at the venue, I picked up a copy of his new book, "Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, " in the vain hopes that we'd have time to stay for the book-signing at the end.  We found our seats and waited patiently for Neil to come out on stage (I feel like I know him well enough to refer to him on a first-name basis) .

After an introduction by a local weather guy (unfortunately not the weather guy that I actually went to school with), it was time for the main event.  To the strains of "Glad You Came" by The Wanted, Neil came out on stage, throwing a couple dance moves into the mix.

Side note: The chorus of this song is unbelieveably apropos.  (I wonder if they had to pay to use it?):
"The sun goes down
The stars come out
And all that counts
Is here and now
My universe will never be the same
I'm glad you came."

Neil deGrase Tyson's ability to feel completely comfortable on stage was clear from the moment that he kicked off his shoes and left them next to the podium while he wandered the stage giving his talk.  He started the talk with a list of everything he would not discuss, from the content of his books (even though that's why he's giving talks) to his views on education, but he left the door open for those topics in the Q&A.

Over the next hour, he covered a range of topics, including #10, "The universe has a shipload of stars" through #6, "Earth is trying to kill you".  Early in the talk, he struggled to get his Mac to work, the only thing that kept the talk from being perfect (the use of the Mac, not the trouble he had with it).  His engaging style kept the audience glued to his every move for the hour or more that he spoke.  He ended on the extremely poetic--and factually correct statement-- for #1, "We are stardust".

After this amazing talk, he opened the floor for questions--and kept taking them long after he was told by the organizers to stop.  The audience clearly knew their speaker, for many of the questions focused on science education and the American educational system in general, a subject about which Neil has strong opinions.

In response to a question about how to fix the US educational system, his answer began with a question that he felt only 3 or 4 people in the audience would be able to answer in the positive.  He first asked how many people in the audience had one teacher in their educational process who was massively influential in how they got to where they are today, to which a number of people raised their hands.  As he upped the numbers through two to three to four, the number of hands dwindled.  He randomly picked out some of those people and asked, half-seriously, "Did you grow up in America?"  By the time he got to six, only a few hands were still up.  (Surprisingly enough, given my husband's views on education, his hand was one of the ones still in the air.)  He pointed out that, to fix the educational system, we needed for everyone in the room to be able to answer that question. 

The last question of the night came from a young girl.  After finding out her name and her age/grade (9 years old in 3rd grade), he waxed poetic about how he decided when he was 11 that he wanted to be an astrophysicist.  He then asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  The answer couldn't have been better: "An astrophysicist."  This response literally bowled him over as he rocked back onto his back like a flipped turtle. But Neil has to know how influential he is to these students, that he might be the one teacher they remember in their education.  Even though (or perhaps because) he's not part of the formal schooling system, he can have a huge impact on many, many students and can make a huge impact on the career aspirations and general understanding of science.  This understanding is the reason why I know that mentoring and outreach are so important.

But the answer that resonated with me most deeply came in response to a question asked by another young girl about why, when she looked up the constellation Draco, some resources told her it had nine stars while other said it had 44.  Neil shared his view that the problem was with the way the question was set up, that by asking her to indicate the number of stars, it made her miss the big picture, that people get hung up on how many planets there are and are astonished when the number drops from 9 to 8.  (Neil is well-known for his campaign to demote Pluto from being a planet.)  In this response, he made the following statement, which is where I will leave this summary:
"The problem is most of education is telling you what to think, not how to think."

Genghis Khan's silk underwear

I spent my Saturday doing my part to help science-motivated kids while refueling my own scientific interests.  More specifically, I served as a judge for elementary division (3rd to 5th graders) the 25th annual NC Science and Engineering Fair, the state-wide competition to find the best science and engineering projects from kids in grades 3-12.  The post title derives from a project by a student who participates in competitive archery who wondered whether silk underwear could work like an arrow-proof vest (the short answer is yes). 

After seeing all this exciting science done by 8-11 year-olds, I came home gushing like a one of the 5th graders that I spoke with during the event.  The experience reminds me of the joy I felt when I did science fair projects, ranging from the my first project in 3rd grade to try to correlate weather patterns to my cat's food preferences (data were very inconclusive) to my award-winning 7th grade project on the stain-resistant carpets (which held up rather well against food stains but not so well against dirty motor oil and other substances).

The more poignant projects were the ones with a strong personal connection for the student, like the girl who studied peripheral vision in "Subject D" (her Dad) who had a detached retina that had been surgically repaired; the boy who studied the caffeine level of drinks because of his father's recently diagnosed Meniere's disease; the girl who studied salinity changes in estuaries because she wants to be a marine biologist; the girl who came up with a clever experiment to measure moon impact craters because she wants to be an astrophysicist.  Speaking with these kids, especially the last one mentioned, helps me remember my passion for science and my desire to understand the world around me that drive my science and engineering explorations to this day. 

Some of the more interesting things I learned (or re-learned) from the fair:
-Rap music is bad for studying.
-Sourwood is the best hardwood for building a fire-resistant house.
-Bacteria are everywhere.
-Beta fish are more disturbed by opera than jazz.
-No soda is good soda (more specifically, caffeine is bad for your heart).
-Decaffeinated does not mean no caffeine.  Neither does caffeine free.
-The Roomba algorithm is more efficient in rooms with furniture than empty rooms.
-Cashews make for energy-dense trail mix.
-A scarp is a sharp drop-off on a beach.
-Neal DeGrasse Tyson, a well-known African American astrophysicist, is an inspiration for at least one elementary school girl (and this writer).
-Random pop-up ads in video games can include information on windmills.
-Adults really are smarter than a 5th grader--at least when it comes to the Stroop effect (processing conflicting information, like the word red presented in blue text).
-Genghis Khan wore silk underwear.
-Disproving a hypothesis is as important (if not more so) than proving one.

Our scientific establishment would be well-served to take that last lesson to heart.  The supporters of science, from the organizations and government agencies and corporations that fund it to the universities that tenure professors on it to the journals that publish it, need to understand how crucial is it is that negative or inconclusive results get published and shared in the literature as widely as the exciting breakthroughs.  The more transparent we all are in what we share, the less time and money and effort are wasted on avenues of research that have already been investigated without success.

"What do you do?"

Whenever I meet a new person, there's a part of me that dreads this question.  We Americans seem to have an obsession with defining ourselves by what we do--and I'm the poster child for this phenomenon. This focus on determining who someone is by how they're employed can be particularly detrimental for a perfectionist such as myself.  On a good week, I'm proud to call myself an Engineer with a capital E--you know, someone who can MacGyver together a solution to a problem, someone who gets so enthralled by a challenging problem that I lose all track of time.  On a bad week, I wonder why I chose my major and subsequent career path and wonder if I might be a masochist.  Lucky for me, I manage to have more good weeks than bad (or at least that's how I choose to remember it).

This self-doubt is made worse by the fact that I'm a female in a male-dominated profession. Although my male co-workers may question their own ability to do a specific task or solve a particular problem, I doubt that they question whether they should have ever gone into engineering.  Or, if they do, it's probably not for the same reasons that I do, primarily a lack of other women in the profession.  I know of at least one other female engineer who feels the same way on occasion.  I recognize that the female role models I've had over the years, both during my education and my work life, have been very influential in helping me doubt myself less.  It's one of the main reasons that I find it so important and so rewarding to share my love of science and engineering with female students. 

With that said, I wish that society did a better job of encouraging us to embrace our entire selves, instead of so quickly focusing in on our profession or our job.  The next time that someone asks me that loaded question "What do you do?", maybe I'll answer with one of these:
"I play ultimate frisbee whenever the weather's warm and I can find a good game."
"I'm an unofficial aunt to a handful of smart, beautiful, energetic kids who love me."
"I try to capture the beauty and majesty of our world through my camera lens."
"I laugh at myself and try not to take myself too seriously."
"I try to be the best friend, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, engineer and all-around good person that I can be."

Wash n' wear

On Sunday morning, I was doing chores around the house when I noticed a sudden silence from the laundry room.  Given that I had started a load of laundry not long ago, I figured something was wrong.  When I checked the washer, it was supposed to be spinning but nothing was happening.  I tried switching cycles and it ran through the wash cycle again but still wouldn't spin.  Crud.  Given the peaceful lazy Sunday I had planned, I was not at all happy with this turn of events.  Thanks to the power of Google, I was able to find out what was the most likely cause of the problem: a broken lid switch.  Five minutes and a few loose screws later, I confirmed that the lid switch had broken away from the washer, due to the flimsy plastic casing and one-too-many times of slamming down the washer lid.  (Note to self:  the future, gently lower the washing machine lid rather than letting it slam down.)in

It took a little searching online and a quick trip to Lowe's to come to the frustrating realization that washer parts are not available on a Sunday, which seems rather odd given that weekends are when people are most likely to do laundry.  Rather than letting my clothes ferment in the brackish stew, I pulled them out in clumps and left them in the sink to soak in clean water.  It could easily have been worse--the clothes that were in the washer were all my work-out clothes rather than my nice work clothes.

Dredging my shirts out of the opaque water, I was reminded of the old-school (but brand-new) washer we had in Kumasi, where the wash cycle and the spin cycle were done in separate bins, requiring me to transfer soaking wet clothes from dirt-laden water into the spin basket.  Somehow I found it much more annoying to deal with that clothing transfer here.  I'm a bit annoyed with myself for falling prey to the expectation that living in the US means that I should only have to deal with developed-world issues, like the cable going out or poor service in a restaurant, rather than less-developed-world situations, like hand-transfers of laundry.

On Monday morning I was able to buy the part at the Sears repair shop--once it opened at 10 am, that is.  Since it's located at Northgate, it operates on mall hours even though it's a free-standing building.  Once I got the part home, I was able to follow a really awesome YouTube video by Repair Clinic on how to replace the lid switch.  After reassembling the washer, I must admit that I did the "Yeah, I got mad skillz" dance to celebrate my victory over the washing machine.  Amazing how much of a sense of accomplishment I can get from completing a small home repair.  I celebrated my victory by washing the clothes that had been soaking for two days.  I guess they'll be really clean now.

Being Thankful

A year ago, I was in Ghana on my PULSE assignment.  Thanksgiving dinner was a fried turkey that had been bought that morning by our cook and killed that afternoon by our caretaker.  Since my housemates were all from places other than the US, it was the first Thanksgiving that they had ever celebrated.  What I enjoyed most about that experience is recognizing how truly privileged I was to be having such a non-traditional Thanksgiving day experience.  The meaning of the holiday was not lost on me, as I was unbelievably thankful to have the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving someplace where I recognized how much I really had to be thankful for.

This year I was away from home for Thanksgiving, but it didn't involve crossing an ocean.  We headed out out to the mountains to the house that once belonged to my husband's grandparents.  The crystal blue sky and moderate temperatures made us all happy to share the heavy burden of raking up a yard full of leaves and then (here comes the fun part) burning them in a huge bonfire.  Oddly enough, the smoke of the bonfire drew me back to my Thanksgiving experience from last year, since one of the main ways that my Kumasi neighbors got rid of trash was by burning it.  I took on the self-appointed role of fire marshal and kept the fire burning happily all evening until it was time for us to drive home.

******************

In years past, I was excited to pull out the Christmas decorations and Griswold-up the house with everything from colored lights to an animated polar bear.  But I just can't seem to get into the Christmas spirit this year.  Part of it is my lack of interest in the shopping and sales that has become such a key part of the holiday season.  I much prefer the Christmas season that I had last year that culminated with a very unique but unbelievably magic Christmas day at the Wli Waterfalls (see this post for a reminder of that experience).  Much like the Thanksgiving described above, being away from the more commercial aspects of the holidays helped me get in touch with the reasons for the holiday season.

Another part of my restlessness is not knowing what my next big adventure/goal will be.  Last year, of course, it was my time in Ghana, and in previous years I had found my passion in many ways, often involving being part of an ultimate team.  But these days I'm feeling a bit unfocused and unclear on my direction.  But I probably just need to sit with this feeling and see where life takes me next.

The Garden Isle

The sign of a successful vacation: losing track of the time of day and even the day of the week.  (I think it might be Sunday and, since it's pitch-black, it must be after 7 pm.)  I type this from a wicker chair in the center of a cement-floored cottage on the Garden Isle, more popularly known as Kauai, the northernmost of the major Hawaiian islands.  LJ and I have had a relaxing few days here with lazy days on the beach, beautiful hikes through the mountains,plenty of sleep, and lots of yummy local seafood and other eats.

Rain is an ever-present threat in Hawaii this time of year, especially on the rainy island of Kauai, but we've been pretty lucky so far.  Other than a downpour on the night we arrived and a few showers while hiking one day, we haven't seen too much rain.  Without any major storms on the horizon, the ocean has been pretty safe to swim in on the more protected east and south sides of the island. Which is a fantastic thing, because the ocean is where you can find.... sea turtles!  (For those of you who don't know, sea turtles are one of my favorite things to see in the ocean.  Any dive trip where I can see some sea turtles is automatically a wonderful trip.)  I spent many happy minutes floating over a sleeping sea turtle in the reef-protected waters at Ke'e beach.  While at the beach, we also saw a resting monk seal on the beach.  Just seeing those two animals made my trip worth it.  But they are not the only animals on the island.  Geckos can be found all over the place, including inside the house.  And then there are the chickens.

Kauai is known for its ridiculous number of feral chickens, with roosters and chickens all over the island.  These roosters are as time-challenged as the ones that lived in our garden in Kumasi, crowing at all times of day and night.  The other day on Ke'e beach, there were two roosters that seemed to be having a crowing contest or a conversation, I'm not sure which.  They were less than enthused by the appearance of an energetic, happy dog, which caused them to demonstrate their limited flying skills to escape the dog.

My holiday spirit made an appearance at the Festival of Lights parade on Friday night.  I was conflicted about whether or not we should fight the potential crowds but it seems that only a few thousand of the 60K+ locals and tourists decided to show up to watch the parade.  Maybe that's because the rest of them were in it.  Practically every organization on Kauai, from government to churches to youth groups, had a float or a group in the parade.  Even random local people got in on it by decorating baby carriages and shopping carts with lights and decorations.  One of the many Santas in the parade announced to us spectators how he was different from all the rest: "I'm a young, skinny, versatile Santa."  With that sort of entertainment, who won't get in the holiday spirit?