On Wednesday, January 21st, we interviewed Debbie Sterling.  Before our interview, Ms. Sterling talked to the whole middle school about starting her company, “Goldie Blox” and being a female engineer.  We learned about the problems of female engineer and the challenges she faced.  We learned a lot about how from a very young age, boys learn some of the skills that help them be engineers, but girls do not because instead of playing with toys like “LEGOs” and “LINCOLN LOGS”.  Ms Sterling, explained how she came up with her toy and the story that went along with it.  The toy that she created to help familiarize girls with building and spacial skills.  The toys come with a story about a female engineer, named Goldie Bloxs who solves problems like an engineer.  The toy has sold amazingly and has taught young girls the spacial and building skills that boys commonly learn at a young age.  We had the amazing experience of interviewing Ms. Sterling after she talked to the middle school and she talked about how difficult it was completing college while both majoring in engineering and being a woman. The problems of certain jobs being “boy jobs” like construction and engineering and “girl jobs” like nursing.  Often, we are oblivious to these gender differences and do not notice how horrible these expectation are because we are numb to it.  Ms. Sterling raised important points about her career and brought attention to topics and ideas we had not even considered.

This interview was so helpful and provided a new perspective.  The topic we chose was really broad and many of the fieldwork opportunities we had looked into had not worked out.  The interview gave us a sense of the challenges female college students face in certain subjects, for example engineering.  During the interview, we got to talk to someone who faces the challenges of sexism.  Something that was discussed that I had never even considered before was that opinions and stereotypes have barely changed in a long time.  Engineering is still considered a line of work for men and that is so outdated.  I felt so sympathetic hearing the struggles she had faced.