Though I loved SPE I was ready for a change so badly. I needed a new routine, a new set of skills to learn, and a new room.
My work life had become a sort of Groundhog day, or I guess for chemists...Moleday!
Now when I go to work it feels like an advanced chem class in college. Organic Instrumentation is made up of 4 women and 1 male analyst. They have all been working this job for at least a decade and are masters at their skills.
Kim, Dave, and myself are all new additions to instrumentation. We have GC (gas chromatography), LC (liquid chromatography), and GC-MS (Mass Spec) instruments that we're learning. Kim and I are learning GC-MS analysis with 2 of the women that have been here the longest. These women have been running gas chromatography instruments and developing methods as the E.P.A. adds new tests throughout the years.
They've seen the transition from paper graphs and calculators to advanced technical instrumentation.
When I go to work it's like talking to professors. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like work, but growing and learning all day.
They are my science mentors, and I try to gain just some of their wisdom. I greatly admire these women of technology.
They are teaching me how to run high productivity organics analysis laboratory, and they are showing the world what smart and respectable women scientists look like.
They are determined, independent, self reliant, and ambitious. I am grateful to work with these amazing women and learn what I can from them.
I often think how hard was it for them to learn technology in a man's world in their day?
I can only hope that one day I can inspire the same respect as a woman of science one day in future generations.
