By Riley McNeal
& Olivia Austin
Grade 8, Caribou Middle School
On Thursday, March 12, selected students from Caribou Middle School had a chance to attend the Expanding Your Horizons Conference for girls at the University of Maine. The conference is designed to help girl’s become more interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. The career fields are still mainly male-dominated and that is what they are hoping to change by exposing girls to these career fields.
To kick off the day, two speakers came and presented slideshows, and told about their careers in science. The first of two speakers was a marine biologist. She is currently trying to find out why nearly half of the female salmon eggs die before fertilization. The second speaker was a scientist’s communicator. She is in charge of sharing with the public, what the scientists can’t. She translates the difficult scientific jargon into simple, more common terms.
After the scientists spoke, we attended three other sessions covering other topics. GPS and how satellites work was learned in another session. We were able to go outside to find hidden objects using our GPS devises. A veterinarian later told us how the blood cells in mammals, bird, fish and birds differ. We then looked into microscopes to determine what species of blood we were looking at. The third course reminded the girl’s that they need to stay in tune with themselves and know how to make good choices. A quote from the instructor as we were leaving the room said “ You have to respect yourself, before you can learn to love yourself.”
Some of the questions that were asked at the end of the day were “are boys considered better in sports?”, “Do girls at your school have to wear certain clothes or act a certain way to be popular?”, and “Are the rules at school enforced equally for boys and girls?” We had to agree or disagree and then defend our answers.
We also learned about the Bechdel Test for films. In order to pass this test, a movie must contain a scene in which two female characters have a conversation that is not about boys. Some of the movies that did not pass were The Lorax, Men in Black III, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A few movies that did pass were The Fault in Our Stars and Ramona and Beezus.
Our experience at Expanding Your Horizons was educational and enlightening.
