On being a woman

So, I'm cheating and posting this on both my Thursday blog and here, because I thought it was important enough that it should appear here, but it's Thursday, so must appear there as well.

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One of my favorite books is Let Me Be a Woman by Elizabeth Elliot. It is motherly advice to her soon-to-be-married daughter on life and marriage, and is a short read packed-full of wisdom. Some may say it is a bit old fashion, but I think it is beautiful- describing an ideal relationship and, for me, in a way, gives me permission to be feminine.

A couple weekends ago, I attended the Indiana Women in Computing conference (InWIC), which allowed me to be around, for a day, a lot of very smart women. I loved it- I was in a group where I didn't feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb for being female, and yet could "talk geeky" without getting blank stares or funny looks. I felt like I could communicate more freely, that I didn't have to prve myself before being taken seriously. I was also in awe of all the masters and doctorate students and professors- I've never had a female role model in my field, so to see so many smart women working on such cool projects got me pretty excited. Talking to the undergrad girls also made me realize, although I'm not going to Purdue or MIT, I'm getting as good or better a computer science education. I appreciated that.

Check out the pictures - Here's the whole group, I'm on the far left of the back row, next to my friend from high school's girlfriend (from Depauw). The lady on the right here is a Taylor grad who teaches CS at Ivy Tech in Lafayette. The ladies in this picture are, respectively, from Lilly, Microsoft, and Google. (As a side note, I got my resume to each of them, and got an email today from the Google lady asking for my transcript. Hooray.) The lady on the left of this picture is Geri, who I travelled with from Taylor. Oh, and here's an awful picture of me during the BOF session on women in computer science (I talked too much during this session, probably. The photographer caught me when I wasn't talking, apparently.) Here's a better picture of me while I was being crafty making a very cool necklace.
That was the cool part about this. I could sit through a talk about a complex algorithm for secure sharing of personal data, or development of applications for PDAs, then, and hour or so later, eat ice cream and listen to girls giggle about boys and be crafty and make jewelry. I loved it.

And, of course, Valentine's Day was Tuesday. Another glorious day to be a woman. Josh & I cooked dinner, and he got me a DOZEN beautiful roses, as well as a movie I've been wanting and a sweet card. We watched the movie & took it easy for the evening. It was great.