My brother in law, Doug, teaches at a middle school west of Philadelphia. For years, he’s been suggesting that I would have fun presenting at their career day. This year I had a tiny bit of space in my schedule, so I snuck down and back on the Acela. I spent the morning talking to five different groups of 6th through 8th graders. Each group had me for about half an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are <\/a>my<\/a> slides<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The kids were great, they asked all sorts of fun questions. Arguably the best question was “what is your IQ?” (Um, I don’t know?). Every session had at least one precocious one with the persistent and detailed questions. The staff were totally accommodating, and I had a great time. Of course, I was on the schedule as “Dr.”, and apparently I’m a Geneticist and an Author now. I did my best to straighten that out – and to convey a couple of simple messages to the kids:<\/p>\n\n\n\n * All human beings are related to each other. This was met with cries of “EEEW!” What fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My brother in law, Doug, teaches at a middle school west of Philadelphia. For years, he’s been suggesting that I would have fun presenting at their career day. This year I had a tiny bit of space in my schedule, so I snuck down and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
* Computer programming is a decent job skill, but you still have to decide what to build.
* Science changes rapidly, so it’s a good idea to focus your education on the basics: Math, science, critical thinking, and to continually study and read up on what’s new.
* All life on earth is related, in exactly the same way that all humans are related to each other (no “eew,” but there were some very thoughtful looks).
* It’s possible (and a good idea) to aim for happiness in your job as well as a stable income.
* Personal genomics is to the point where you can fill a plastic tube with spit, (“EEEW!”), drop it in the mail, and look on a website a few weeks later to see the where your father and mother’s families were probably from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n