Last week was going by in a complete whirlwind (a lot like this week) but there were a few highlights that stand out in my memory. In fact, they’re pretty much all I remember about last week, unless I think really hard. I think my mind does this on purpose so that when I sit in my room and think to myself, “Oh come on, how bad could the next few days possibly be?” I’ve already forgotten the previous few days. But that’s midterms for you, right?
But one of the few things I do remember last week was WISP’s luncheon with Window Snyder, the Chief Security Officer for Mozilla Firefox. I went in assuming that someone who had that many capital letters in their title must be pretty stuffy, but she was amazing. I mean, that’s kind of all I can say – the lunch exists in my mind in a haze of awesome. Her central message was that if we want to succeed in science, where there’s so much working against us, we have to find something that we really love and are passionate about, and then find a way to do it. And, that if you find yourself in a job that you don’t enjoy, you should just quit.
Uh, which doesn’t sound all that inspiring, but she was all about being passionate enough about something that you are willing to pursue it and keep hold of that – and the fact that she’s done that with her own life is obvious; and amount of energy she focuses towards her job is pretty infectious. And of course, it’s not great advice for everyone – and I know this because it’s not great advice for me. Because in order to do what she’s done, you have to be really passionate about something, and I haven’t really figured out what that thing is yet. But the fact that she did it, and also that she bakes cupcakes, was still very inspiring.
