What's a Scientist Look Like?

If you were to ask 100 kids to draw a "scientist", here's what I'd expect. Perhaps half of them would give you blank stares, not knowing where to begin. Then the other half would draw really weird looking people. Likely white, male, old, with Albert Einstein-hair and chunky glasses. Perhaps an occasional female would pop up, but again, weird would be the theme. Crazy hair, cat-ladylike, and not someone you'd like to hang out with. Definitely not someone a kid would imagine themselves as when they grow up. If you really want to take a survey of what the average person thinks of scientists, just take a look at how scientists are portrayed in movies and television shows

That's one cool thing I like about volunteering. Sometimes just by walking into a room and introducing myself to a bunch of kids I can break about a dozen stereotypes.

Sometimes I dress up when I volunteer. I know that sounds pretty reverse of what you might expect. Most people wear their nice clothes to work and in their free time gratefully throw on a pair of favorite jeans. But there's that pre-teen and teenage group that really cares about appearances. They're the ones that still have a majority of young women marking down on surveys that their number one career choice is to be a model. So if I want to subliminally market a science career to young ladies, I try and look nice and professional. Not like a fashion model, of course, but like someone maybe they'd want to model. And I want to look like someone they will all take seriously.

And sometimes I do wear my work "uniform" -- jeans and T-shirt. Because I think this makes me more approachable to the younger kids and also the adults. And it does make a little more sense, a soil scientist wearing jeans. I do remove the dirt from under my fingernails, though!

But the bottom line is, before going out there to reach out to people in science, I like to think about what the things I'm wearing are communicating to people. Are they reinforcing the message I want to come across? Or contradicting it? People are visual, and my encounter with them may be brief. They may be more likely to remember what I looked like than what I actually said.