..you can make plans but...

...they don't always come to fruition. I was unable to make my game last Thursday due to having to pick up one of the kids who decided not to stay over at a friends and wanted to come home. However, as it turned out it may have been a good thing, because the goalie took a puck to the throat and EMS had to be called. Thankfully she is okay, but she is lucky. I cannot imagine a goalie not wearing a neck block, but she doesn't because it conflicts with her pads due to her size.I suggested to her boyfriend that perhaps she should consider customizing one that does fit, or at the very least wear a regular neck guard.

Our Thursday game gets a little rough at times, and collisions can take the breath out of you, but I've always felt pretty protected under the gear. Not to say I don't feel the pain the next day, but it's all good. It reminds me of field camp in a way- as after a day out hiking and mapping in the mountains you can certainly feel some pain! But the joy of being out among great rock formations makes it all worthwhile.

I am truly looking forward towards picking back up into a program again, as I have missed the whole dynamics of being in a Geology department and exchanging opinions with peers. I feel my brain has gone to rot of late and I'm craving fellow geologists to converse with (in person). Twitter is a great resource for such conversations, but there is also something said for speaking face to face.

end of summer update

As summer comes to a close, I seem to have found my daily activities pretty much encompasses hockey in some facet (playing, or taking my son to play). I am missing geology dreadfully, which should be remedied this fall if I can get back into a geology program as expected. I'm awaiting the credit assessments and whether or not I will be forced to take some courses for what would be a third time just because they weren't taken at said institution. As it currently stands, all my geology credits went over to electives and I'm waiting until I can speak to someone about this without getting emotional (for lack of a better word). Angry would probably be a better term for it. Hence, once the husband returns home next week I will just drag him along to keep me grounded. :)

My youngest son tried out for the local travel team on Monday and Tuesday. He did very well (especially considering he has only been on the ice for 9 mos. and can keep up with kids having 2-3 years under their belt) and we should hear the results tomorrow. I told him that in my eyes he has already accomplished more than I would have ever dreamed of any kid, because he set out with the goal to try out for the travel team and as far as I can see he accomplished that goal whether he makes the team or not. If he doesn't make the travel team this year, he has another year to work on whatever it is that they were looking for, as they provide feedback. He will still get to play on the house team, which has a fantastic coach - so he gets to enjoy the sport he loves and have a great support system behind him.

I missed IHL Tuesday because I had been at the rink for the try outs and was just too tired to stay after having already been there several hours...tonight is a private ice pick up game that I was originally going to bow out of, seeing as my good friend is ditching for a trip to St. Louis to see a Cardinals game (baseball -blech!:) and husband is at his army school (well, war college but whatever). Some of those guys in the group play pretty hard, so it is a little intimidating going in without my little support group. hmm.. I guess that isn't entirely true, since there are several others that will be there that I know. But then again the guy I told to F* off the last game will be there too, and this time I don't have my back up crew. lol. I would say the same to him again though, with or without a back up crew, so it should be all good. He deserved to be yelled at, as he was acting like we were in the NHL and it was the Stanley cup playoffs and when he tried to bully me, I snapped and told him off. It was just supposed to be a fun game, but he turned it into a stress fest. Heck, he misses 99% of his shots and never passes anyways so when he went to tell me how to play I about decked him -but kept it verbal instead. (However, I did take note that he conveniently wears a half shield).

I definitely need to go to the game though, because I am not about to let that little punk think he ran me off! Maybe the result will make for an interesting blog post. lol.

Crashing in on the game

An interesting thing occurred to me this weekend after a stick and puck session at the rink. To give a bit of a back story, there was a little tyke out there just shooting pucks, probably about 6 years old. He had cut in front of me, clipping my toe and fell to the ice. I stopped and made sure he was okay before skating off (and took some ribbing from some of my buddies for taking out a little kid), but when after the session while waiting for hubby and my youngest to come out of the locker rooms a grandfather with a young boy and his mother kept looking over at me. I inwardly groaned thinking I was about to get an earful for making little timmy fall as the mother approached me.

Then she asks, "Is IHL (instructional hockey league) the same as hockey dynamics in the types of drills they do?" I blinked twice when I realized she was interesting in hockey, not telling me off...and happily answered her as to how IHL was like. She said she had been told that she had to know how to do forwards and backwards crossovers as well as a few other abilities before she could join IHL.

I told her that because of my ankle surgeries that I was still unable to do either type of crossover, but that IHL was really the only place I could at least try to practice them in full gear which is slightly different than trying them without all the garb. I also mentioned that a lot of guys could skate fast and do crossovers but couldn't stop to save their life- whereas I had a strong hockey stop at least. (My son and I like to spray each other with snow doing hockey stops). I also mentioned that now was a good time for her to start because a lot of guys had just started and a couple of them could barely stand up straight on their skates. -Meaning that she wouldn't be the best or the worst in the group if she at least knew how to skate.

At about that time a guy who had just attended for the first time last week walks over and I told him what the lady had just said to me and made a comment to him (that I thought he would support so as to encourage this new lady to come to IHL next week) about how some people are really new and it wasn't required to know how to do forward and backwards crossovers (which I knew he didn't have down either), but instead of concurring he says "Oh yeah, you really should know how to do those before coming, I've been skating for 8 mos."!!??

Now, I know of two other guys attending IHL, as well as this guy who are very wobbly and new at the game as well as skating. They were all encouraging each other to come to IHL as well as a few others who had not attended yet, but a female shows and interest and instead of being encouraging, this guy is acting as if he is an old pro! I was incredibly annoyed! If it had been a man asking about IHL I have to say (and this just sickens me to even put a voice to this thought) that he would have told the guy "hey, as long as you can skate for a solid hour come join us!" I just glared at the man and turned to the girl and said "Look, I can't do crossovers but I can at least stop which half these guys can't even do that- don't worry about it, just come out and join us we would love to have you!"

Luckily not all the guys are like this one or I would never have started back to playing hockey. I've been out of the game for 20 years and after just 3 mos back on the ice I still have a long way to go, but it has been a blast scrimmaging and getting back into the game. The ones I like the most are those who treat you the same as the other guys- if you are in the way you get the shoulder and get plowed into just as an equal. My body sure protests the next morning with all the aches and pains, but with the pain I have to smile knowing I have a group of friends that treat me as an equal. There are 3 of us girls who play and all 3 of us appreciate being treated as such more than any of us can say. That just proves there are really great guys out there, who value women as individuals and don't consider the fact that us being female is a limitation in any facet. I just wish there were more of them out there.

"Science: it’s a girl thing" -Time to fire your advertising company.

While it is pretty obvious the EU projects advertisement geared towards young women in the hopes of spiking an interest in STEM was a colossal failure, I still find myself disturbed by the mindset of those behind this video’s creation. 

 

Besides the fact that it is demeaning, insulting, condescending, etc… there is something even deeper about the video that truly bothers me. I have been trying to pick out just what it is about the video that makes me feel so aggravated. It’s the same feeling I had when I saw a woman at the rink during a hockey stick and puck session who was a hot mess of ..well… PINK! Pink helmet, gloves, shin pads, socks, jersey, you name it. Not that I think women hockey players need to dress and act like men, but she was akin to a hockey hooker in my mind. I would never have thought it possible to trash out a hockey uniform, but she managed to do just that. I don’t have an aversion to pink, but she appeared to be there more to attract the attention of the men present rather than to just slap a puck around and improve her game. 

Which brings me back to the Science: it’s a girl thing video. The women in the video are dressed inappropriately for any lab, and if I saw a woman walk into a lab like that I would tell her to take her hoochie-mama-self right back where she came from. What is the purpose of dressing like you’re going out to the club in order to conduct science? Are they there to do work, or to pick up a new boyfriend?

And here is where I can scratch away the layers to almost see what is really bothering me. It wasn’t always easy for a woman to get an education, and when they were allowed to go off to college it was more in the hopes that they would find a husband. It was unheard of to actually succeed in science and have an independent career- heck, some women had to publish their studies under their male peers names just to be taken seriously. 

This video with the make-up, lipstick flying, and girls looking like what most would dub as a “hoe” does not project in any aspect what women in science represent. It’s not like women scientists aren’t feminine or sans make-up. I wear make-up to the field myself from time to time. I also love Victoria’s Secret. You can be muddy, grubby, stinky, sweaty, and look more like a male than female after a long day out in the field, but still feel pretty when secretly sporting VS. 

If they (EU) had wanted to make a video that would perk interest in STEM, they should have put together a reel of what women scientists really get to do. I got to ride a camel through the Siq in Jordan- I felt like Indiana Jones and couldn’t stop smiling. I drank tea with Bedouins, found beautiful artifacts at a roman fort, and snorkeled in the Red Sea. That was just one project. Because of the nature of geology, you travel a lot and I’ve been to places I would never have dreamed of had I chosen a different path. I’m also happy in a lab examining thin sections, or in the field mapping. I love everything that geology embodies. While geology isn’t for everyone, there are other disciplines that could inspire young women to feel just as passionate about science.

The blog “This Is What a Scientist Looks Like” helps to change the stereotypical perception of a scientist, and it is fantastic. The only thing I would change about it is for the scientists featured to detail the types of tasks they perform in their jobs, because I was really interested in some of the bios and would have loved to have read more about them (but then that would be more along the lines of what a scientist does.).