Elisa's Milling About: Fall Brings…
by Elisa Miller , 2008-2009 LSC President
Fall is my favorite time of year. I’m always happy when the weather starts to cool down and the days get shorter. When we lived on the East Coast, I really enjoyed the changing of the seasons and the colors of the leaves…then they fell, and we raked and raked and raked.
It seems as though each season brings with it some different kind of work for those of us in STC. In the summer, the Executive Council works very hard to plan a programming year full of interesting presentations and long-term goals for our chapter. As we move into the Fall, our thoughts turn to Competitions.
LSC Annual Competitions. We ask each of you to look back through the work that you’ve done for the last 24 months for exemplars of your best work. We hope that you will submit your samples to the LSC’s Annual Competition for review and reward.
The Competition process is a win-win for everyone. As a submitter, you get to submit your work to a group of judges who are your peers—who have met certain criteria within their community. As a community, we offer our senior, most experienced members a change to use their expertise in judging the entries. As judges, we get to view the work of others—and I have to say that every time I have participated as a judge—I have learned something in the process. The checklists that we use to judge the entries serve as reminders of all the things that we should think about when we create our work product. Yet, when we are at work, how many of us take the time to review those checklists?
If you haven’t done so, please look through your work and see what you can submit and then, just do it.
Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology (BEST) Competition. Speaking of competitions, the annual BEST competition is also a Fall feature. Once again, Lone Star STC will be judging the process notebooks prepared by the students. If you are available Thursday evening, October 23, or Saturday, October 25, consider participating in this event. The students really appreciate the feedback that we provide. Besides, we always have a great time seeing what the students create.
Fall Holidays. Fall also brings the beginning of football, the end of baseball and one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. I love to see the kids in their costumes. Over the years we’ve had some really cute kids come by our house. By and large, they are polite and appreciative of the goodies we provide. And we appreciate the time they spend getting ready for the annual candy haul. Fall is a great time for chocolate. It doesn’t melt as quickly and is less likely to make a mess. And for a chocoholic like me, it is one more thing to be thankful for.