By:Charlotte Capers Snoad
When I was in sixth grade, I ran for Speaker of the House in my middle school YMCA Youth in Government program. I won. So did the girl who ran for Youth Governor. Two out of three of our elected officials were girls. That seemed about right.
That same year, the high school Youth in Government program had elections. The winners? All male. When the middle school and high school elected officials were brought together on the final day of the conference, I was stunned. My 12-year-old self knew this was not the way things should be. And it changed the way I see my world.
Today, I count. I count the number of young women who are presidents of clubs in my school. I count the number of young women who are on students council (we actually are doing pretty well there, at least in Greenville County, SC). I count the number of times teachers call on boys vs. the number of times they call on girls. I count the times when people automatically assume "we need some guys to help us move these chairs."
I've gotten a little obsessed with counting.
I also started counting the number of times young women have made an event happen, despite who is actually "leading" it. I've started counting the times it was my female friends in class who said, "We need to...." followed by a great new idea to address an issue in our school. I've started counting the number of times I've heard a female friend tell me about something amazing another female friend is doing.
If I wanted to be depressed, I could look at the terrible numbers that reflect women in leadership positions in our country. Those are bad numbers. Less than one in four elected officials - from local to state to Congress - are women. And even though we now have more CEOs in Fortune 500 companies than ever before in our history, that number is just 32. That means only 6.4 percent of these positions are held by women. That's not acceptable!
What does this tell little girls who are thinking about what they want to be when they grow up? What does this tell US? It's 2017, and are we really okay with the fact that it is a steep uphill battle for any young woman who wants to serve her community in elected office? That the odds of her becoming the CEO of a huge corporation are really, really stacked against her?
This is important. And we need to do something about this. I am surrounded by friends, and friends of friends, who are the most amazing people in the world. And they are young women. We need to stop waiting for things to change, and we need to make them change now.
How? Decide now that you are a leader. Even if that makes you nervous. Even if maybe you don't think you are. Do you have ideas? Do you want to make a difference? If your answer is yes, then you are a leader.
Women are smart, and we are organized, and we are compassionate, and we are supportive, and we are strong and fierce. Let's link arms and teach each other, and encourage each other, and learn from each other. EmpoweHER.
February 24, 2019
On Procrastination
By: Sophie Henry
When I was tasked with writing this blog post (over a month ago!), I was so excited. I’ve always
loved to write and I knew that I could do a fantastic job with it. “I’ll start planning for this post
on Wednesday”, I told myself. Well, that was four Wednesdays ago. I know that this is an
altogether common experience for me, whether it’s in school or in writing my blog posts or in
calling my grandmother (now that I think about it, I was supposed to do that today, too).
Procrastination is not something that I am a stranger to.
Unfortunately for me, I’m only a year out from college, which means that my procrastination is
going to start to count towards future success. At least in high school most of my assignments
aren’t very time consuming. But as I start looking deeper into where I want to go to school and
what I want to do with my life (that’s a scary thing to put onto paper), I’m beginning to realize
that I need to make some changes, and that’s hard. Procrastinating important things is a very
good way to do very, very badly, something that I am lucky enough to not experience all that
often.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good student, but I am far from a perfect one. Some of that is due to
not trying hard enough or spending too much time on instagram and not enough at my desk,
but a large part of my academic faults is due to- you guessed it- procrastinating. Even tonight I
have an assignment that I have to do before tomorrow. I do have some strategies to fight
procrastinating- I just need to actually implement them. During exam weeks and before
pressing deadlines I do actually use them, and they worked for me, so I’ll share some of those
strategies. Who knows, maybe sharing them will help me keep myself accountable for my tasks.
1. Delete social media from your phone.
Social media is SO FUN, which is what makes it so bad for fighting procrastination. There
are more nights than not that I find myself lying in my bed for hours at a time looking at
“just one more meme” that turns into 2 more, 10 more, 2 hours more. By deleting the
social media that I use the most of, I gained almost two hours a day of my life back. That
time could be used to go on a hike, try new food, or (in my case) study up on my
chemistry.
2. Keep a journal.
This is one of my favorite things to do. I keep a bullet journal (it’s not pretty, but it’s
functional!) and I love getting the chance to see what I actually spent time on. I’m fairly
new to the whole process, but even four months in to a journal, I can tell that it’s
making an improvement on my time and happiness. If fancy bullet journals aren’t for
you, then taking as little as five minutes out of your day to write about what you did can
be a great way to relax and reflect on your time usage.
3. Keep your living space clean.
My mother’s favorite word to describe me is a slob. My room is a perpetual disaster and
my desk is constantly cluttered. This makes it really hard to focus on what I actually
should be doing and results in a vicious cycle of procrastination and distraction when
what I need is a clean, empty space to sit and work. This might be the easiest tip I have
to combat procrastination and it’s the one that I need to follow the most.