[JaneYoung]

Speaking as a woman who was a very shy quiet girl who had to embrace the changes her body went through - feeling rather like an alien in her own skin - and then working through all of the different attitudes and levels of tolerance in the math education side of things in junior high and high school and then again in the college education as a whole, I would say - embracing, adapting to, accepting, or rejecting change and opinions has been a pretty consistent way of life from the 50's up through now for me.

The teachers whose insistence that I embrace the status quo - were male teachers. So were many of the professors. One professor told me to give up, go home, get married, and make babies. At the same time, another professor (a woman) was raving about my abilities to comprehend and understand the nature of writers such as Maya Angelou in her book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Sylvia Plath's, The Bell Jar. And at the same, another male professor was making me work harder for an A in his class than I had ever worked for a grade, all while being treated with respect as a student in his classroom. 2 of the classes that I've mentioned impacted my education, life, and career choices in positive and memorable ways. One class impacted my personal life in ways that took years for me to come to peace with.

Embracing such statements as - chain is like a high maintenance woman - is not something I would have embraced in 1973 and it is not something I would embrace in 2010. I also don't plan to encourage girls and young women to embrace statements like that with regard to robotics, their futures, their professions, or with regard to life.

Jane