Summary of Lindy Elkins-Tanton's A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I was a teenager in 1982, and I was interested in literature and writing. I was also interested in politics and activism, but I was afraid of nuclear war.
#2 I had a difficult time understanding how others perceived me, and I was not the master of how my actions and intentions were received. I had a difficult time relating to others, and I felt like I did not understand them.
#3 When I arrived at MIT, I was struggling with my calculus class. I had never had to study in high school, and the MIT freshman load of physics, calculus, chemistry, and a humanities class strained my weak study skills.
#4 I had grown up reading the stories of the great explorers. I read Endurance and in my mind I traveled along with Shackleton and his team as they survived the icy imprisonment and eventual destruction of their ship, and the necessary and hopefully temporary abandonment of the less able people on Elephant Island with just a freezing ledge of rock for shelter.

Sujets

• Science
• Autobiography
• Technology
• Biography
• Science and technology
• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822547865
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Lindy Elkins-Tanton's A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was a teenager in 1982, and I was interested in literature and writing. I was also interested in politics and activism, but I was afraid of nuclear war.

#2

I had a difficult time understanding how others perceived me, and I was not the master of how my actions and intentions were received. I had a difficult time relating to others, and I felt like I did not understand them.

#3

When I arrived at MIT, I was struggling with my calculus class. I had never had to study in high school, and the MIT freshman load of physics, calculus, chemistry, and a humanities class strained my weak study skills.

#4

I had grown up reading the stories of the great explorers. I read Endurance and in my mind I traveled along with Shackleton and his team as they survived the icy imprisonment and eventual destruction of their ship, and the necessary and hopefully temporary abandonment of the less able people on Elephant Island with just a freezing ledge of rock for shelter.

#5

I declared geology as my major, despite not being able to handle the difficult chemistry classes. Earth and planetary science required math, chemistry, physics, and biology, but was viewed as easier than other science majors.

#6

I had the idea that the real goal was doing, not studying about. I was hired to write code for the New England seismic network, and I spent hours each day working with a couple of undergrads and a couple of grad students. I loved my job.

#7

I was in a class called Igneous Petrology in my sophomore year, and our professor, Tim Grove, was looking for an undergraduate to work on some research. I volunteered, and began asking questions. Tim answered a few, and then said, coldly, Questions are fine as long as there are not too many of them.

#8

Tim’s project was to create the first feldspar geobarometer and geothermometer. He wanted to heat powdered rock at set pressures and temperatures, extract the resulting rocks, and measure the potassium, calcium, and sodium in their feldspars.

#9

I learned how to make the tiny gold capsules, hammering the capsule into the correct width, and welding in the tiny measure of rock powder and droplet of water using an arc welder with a hand-sharpened carbon tip.

#10

By the end of my junior year, I had produced a working feldspar geothermometer and geobarometer. The electron microprobe allowed me to measure the exact composition of the feldspar minerals that formed in my experiments, and allowed me to produce them.

#11

I was told that I was at MIT on sufferance, that I was not good enough. But feeling desired for my physical body was easy and everyday. When we were freshmen, a male friend told me that they had joked behind my back about the Lindy Lottery: the competition among the undergrad men to go out with me.

#12

I was asked to survey my fellow undergraduates about their attitudes around women in science, in general, and women at MIT, in particular. The results showed that 46 percent of the women and 53 percent of the men felt that women were preferentially admitted.

#13

I was so terrified of asking questions that I did not even attend the one scientific conference in which my work was presented. I needed to be a scientist, but I was not yet ready. I needed a magnifying glass question.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

When I was eighteen and home in Ithaca for the summer after my freshman year of college, I went with my friend Sara to a party. We followed the directions to drive along a dark country road, park on the side, and then walk down a dirt road through a dark forest to a stream, Fall Creek.

#2

I fell in love with Curtis, a graduate student at Cornell, during my freshman year. We went backpacking together in the White Mountains, and he tried to identify all the plants around us. I yearned for a presentable family house and good behavior, but when I was with Curtis, all of that seemed irrelevant.