Lockheed Martin Virtual Mentor Response: From the Excellent and Amazing - Erin Fidler!
“Hi Eurekans! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday!”
“I’ve spent the last couple of weeks having some fun and doing some traveling. I went to Peru the week before Thanksgiving with some friends and had a great time traveling around the country. We were able to visit Machu Picchu and some of the other Incan ruins which have amazing stone work. The engineering the ancient Incans were able to accomplish was incredible – they did not use mortar in between their stones and some of them are so precisely matched that you can’t even fit a knife in between the stones.”
“I came back just in time to fly to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with my family. We spend the weekend in a cabin up in the mountains, mostly eating and playing cards. Coming back to work this week was tough after 2 weeks off!”
What did you all do for Thanksgiving?
STEM-related things I have done recently:
“I am a volunteer tutor at San Jose State University near my home, where I work with some of the engineering students to help them with homework and studying. One of my favorite STEM activities is volunteering for the Tech Challenge at the San Jose Tech Museum. Every year they have a challenge that students between 4th and 12th grade work in teams to solve, and then one weekend they come into the museum and compete. I volunteer as a judge and get split time between interviewing the teams to understand what process they used to come to their solution and overseeing the performance part of the competition. This past year the challenge was to build a glider that would launch, fly over a couple of “mountains”, around a “storm”, and deliver ping pong balls to a platform. It’s really fun to see how excited the teams are and how creative the solutions can be. Some of the teams even come in costume so it’s a really fun day!”
Judging the Tech Challenge (I’m in the blue shirt)
What I would include in my dream school:
“This sounds like a super fun project! I spent a lot of time studying in the library in college, so my dream school would have to include a great library. Ideally it would have both individual and group study spaces (my engineering friends and I did a lot of group studying to help us get through the homework!) with computers and whiteboards. I also would want it to have lots of windows. And a snack bar would be nice too to get through those long hours of studying!”
How I push through frustration and cope with failure:
“One of the things I have learned in my career is that failure is part of the job. If you are challenging yourself, it’s not always going to go the way you want or expect. But challenges are how we learn and grow, so you shouldn’t avoid them. The key is how you recover from failure – I think it’s best to acknowledge your mistakes and then figure out how to move forward and fix the problem. And ask for help when you need it. I used to worry about asking for help and that people would think I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’ve learned that usually people are happy to help. It’s much better to admit you don’t know than to fake it and potentially make things worse. As for frustration, I deal with it by taking a deep breath and a break if I need to. Taking a walk or a few minutes away from the frustrating situation can make a huge difference and allow you to come back calmer and ready to try again.”
What kinds of animals do I love, if I could be any animal in the world what would I be and why?
I like most animals. Growing up we had cats and a dog. I like that cats are so independent but sometimes very cuddly. And dogs are so loyal and friendly. If I could be any animal I think I would be a cat – they basically do whatever they feel like!
What are you all looking forward to over the winter break?
Looking forward to hearing from you all again,
