Obama needs to know.

That it’s NOT my fault that I haven’t been giving back to my community.  When he was elected he called on all of us to stop our bitchin’ and volunteer and stuff, so I immediately contacted the Center for the Education of Women, which is a place in Ann Arbor that essentially advocates and researchers women in higher education and the workforce (because chicks before dicks, ya’ll).  I told them I’m a statistician and that I have a lot of research experience and skills that would be useful in their research, and also that I’m interested in promoting women in math and science.  It took 2 weeks to hear back and the woman I talked to said she would mention me in their next board meeting or whatever.  I never heard back at all.  So, yeah I was little discouraged that no one wanted my free, highly skilled help at the Center for the Education of Women.

More recently, I’ve been emailing around looking for after-school tutoring/mentoring programs for young ladies who may be interested in pursuing a career in math or science at the college level.  I’ve emailed principals at local high schools, a youth center, a few teachers and a group (that must now be defunct) that seemed to do just that.  I haven’t heard back from one GD place, not even a message to tell me “no, that doesn’t exist.”  I did have success with the Association for Women in Mathematics though, and I’m currently mentoring a young lady majoring in math via email.  I was worried it wouldn’t be as useful to her as face-to-face mentoring would, but I think it’s actually going very well.  I didn’t realize I actually have sort of a wealth of good advice regarding grad school application strategy, and I feel like I’m actually helping her with the tricky process.  I really wanted to mentor younger girls, but this is a lot better than nothing, and hopefully I can encourage a few more ladies to go into math fields (so I won’t be so lonely).

Anyway, Obama needs to know I’m tryin’.