Inspiration

Last Wednesday, I had the most interesting day.   I was asked to give the keynote address at a conference called Woman@Work.  The conference was aimed at girls in the local area that were considering what to do after school so they were 14-16 years old.

As usual, I asked what they wanted me to talk about, and as usual, they said, oh whatever you want.  So I asked what the other presenters were covering, and it was generally their career journey, so I thought I guess I can do that.

I spent a long time creating this very colorful animated presentation, aimed at keeping their interest.  I was thrilled when I found this for my title page.

Aah a visual interpretation of my alter ego: a geologist who never let's anything gets her down because she has dinosaurs in her purse!

I really didn't want to be boring, and I was fairly convinced that if someone like me had come to talk to me at that age I'd have thought...yawn.  

I decided to tell a few stories starting with the story of how I got into geology with a short route through poultry science - this got a very big laugh and I told this story without embellishment (as it really didn't need it) with a picture of me and dad standing between the North American and Eurasian plates.

They seemed interested and they laughed at all the right places and they clapped in a nice way when it was over, even though I ended with a boring slide of advice, which included there are times when parents are right.

It is funny putting something like this together because if you do it right you have to be a bit brave and I like to keep me for me.  But I did my best and was appropriately horrified when I did a run through and ended up in tears.  

Taking questions, I sort of saw myself for the first time as they were genuinely interested in how I had done this, which I had to admit that I am still a bit confused by that myself.

My last piece of advice was never to let the fact that you know nothing about something get in your way of doing - most seemed confused by this, but I saw some very clear lights go on, and I guess that is all you can do.  

When a girl asked me, but how (she wanted SPECIFICS) did you know you could do it, and I said well truthfully I didn't, but my parents always said I could do/be anything I wanted to and I guess in the end, I believed them.

The behind the scenes (a little tab will come up in the video) with the girls in video are also very good; it's SO I WORE PINK...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpe3Up9T_g