I Might’ve Been a Rocket Scientist (Like My Dad), But I Was a Girl

Earlier this year I took my girl scout troop to tour Texas Instruments (TI) in Lehi, Utah. It’s a huge manufacturing plant for semiconductors used in electronic devices, and a very enthusiastic female employee spent two hours touring the facilities with us while giving a presentation about why girls make excellent engineers. My own dad is an MIT trained aerospace engineer (a rocket scientist) who worked on missiles, and during high school I attended a summer engineering program at Utah State University. Strangely enough, I remember standing to the side during all of the engineering challenges and letting the boys do everything (even when I thought they were doing a terrible job). I probably had the smartest dad in the room and the best DNA for engineering, but I barely participated because I was convinced engineering was for boys.

These are some pictures of me growing up with my dad, who was a great father. I don’t have any bad feelings (as everyone was just following the cultural norms), but I’ve always wondered if I’d had a brother what sort of career guidance he would have received.

Thankfully, our tour guide at TI told my girls repeatedly how great it is to work in STEM fields (like engineering) as women because they would always have job security, make good money and be able to support themselves.

My girl scouts at Texas Instruments, all faces except mine blurred for privacy (but they’re super cute!).

Outside of attending that summer engineering program during high school, I don’t remember ever being encouraged to pursue engineering by any adults in my life growing up. It was quite the opposite, actually. I was warned against pursuing a career of any kind following Ezra Taft Benson’s harsh disapproval of women working for pay outside of the home. Every single woman I interacted with in my small Utah town relayed these messages to me until I graduated from high school.

These quotes came from the following three talks: THIS ONE, THIS ONE, and THIS ONE, all given by President Ezra Taft Benson when I was six years old.

After graduation, boys were instructed to focus on their missions, and girls were instructed to focus on marriage. I heard that from my friends, youth leaders, in seminary, at church, at firesides, my patriarchal blessing, again at BYU, and probably even in my regular high school classes because I lived in Utah. I heard it from everyone I loved, and everyone who loved me. Instead of marriage though, I really wanted to go on a mission. Not only would it be an adventure away from Utah, it would allow me to postpone getting married and having kids for at least a few years.

One Sunday as a senior in high school I’d just left my church building when a very powerful feeling overcame me. I felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to get married next, not wait and go on a mission in three years. I thought to myself reluctantly, “Well, I guess this is the spirit preparing me to meet someone.”

Looking back on that moment now I think, “Oh my gosh, that wasn’t divine revelation! You’d just had seventeen lessons in a row about how you needed to get married and make babies, and your brain was finally giving in to the overwhelming pressure.”

The next fall I went to BYU and avoided boys completely because I was afraid dating would lead to marriage, which would lead to the most terrifying situation of all – being pregnant! I was not excited about motherhood, but if an honorable returned missionary picked me out, I felt like I’d be obligated to marry him. Since any righteous man and woman could make it work, and God wanted me to find a righteous man quickly, I chose to hide from anyone who could ruin my dreams of doing literally anything except getting married and pregnant. I was only 18 but didn’t feel like I could date just for fun, because all of the adults in my life had worked hard to make marriage the singular priority for me. None of them suggested choosing a serious career path or looking at what different jobs paid, even just as a backup plan in case no returned missionary ever picked me as his bride.

I eventually gave in and dated a nice freshman boy, and he became my boyfriend before leaving on his mission. Going through old photographs recently, I found pictures of us together on our way to church in the summer of 2000. This is me at age (barely) 19, and him at age (almost) 19. We’d both graduated from high school and finished our first year of college. Coincidentally, his dad was also an engineer. Educationally and career wise, we were still equals at this point.

After this photo he left on his mission, then I met and married my husband (and didn’t go on a mission), graduated from BYU, worked for a couple years, and quit to become a stay-at-home mom to three kids.

This boy served his mission, married his wife, graduated from BYU with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering, and never quit his job while also becoming a dad to five kids.

We’re both 42 now – but he has a marketable, high paying job with two decades of experience in his field and can be employed anywhere he wants to live. I have a worthless degree from twenty years ago that no employer cares about, and relatively little work experience beyond self-employment.

That night at Texas Instruments with my girl scouts turned unexpectedly emotional for me. I met female engineers who encouraged the girls to pursue engineering simply because they’d be good at it and love their jobs, and not just as a backup plan in case they weren’t pretty enough to snag a man.

As we left, our tour guide gave the girls Texas Instruments shirts with pink sleeves, designed to recruit teenage girls into future engineering jobs with their company. I took this picture in my closet later that night. I needed a photo of the shirt and my daughter didn’t want to put it on for me, so I just used myself as the model instead.

Me, pretending to be a teenager.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking about that picture of myself with my college boyfriend in the summer of 2000. I still had a world of possibilities open to me back then, but I saw none of them because the voice of a dead man had blinded me to any of them. Wide awake at midnight, I opened the selfie of me in my daughter’s shirt and zoomed in on the wrinkles around my eyes. I kept thinking about that 19-year-old wrinkle-free face and imagined it was her in the shirt in 2000, not 42-year-old me (with lots of wrinkles) in 2024. I know it was a weird insomnia activity, but after staring at that picture long enough I got out of bed and cried for a solid hour – about not being an engineer.

The next day I thought about how weird the night had been, and how I probably need more therapy. I mean, has anyone else ever cried at midnight over not having a job that they didn’t even care about eight hours before?

Fortunately, social media has made my world much more expansive and within days of my own midnight sob, I came across a post in an online LDS women’s career group expressing a very similar experience. The author even describes having “a good cry” and feeling “ridiculous” about it, which described exactly what had happened to me. Her original post (and all of the screenshots I share below) have all identifying information removed and are shared with permission of the authors. I highlighted the words in yellow that jumped out to me personally from the original post below.

This post quickly became popular with hundreds of likes and almost a hundred comments. Many of the stories shared reminded me of my own. 

Each of the following comments come from a different woman responding to the woman’s post from above.

Finally, here is an emotional TikTok video from a creator who attended Rick’s College thirty years ago. She tells a story that felt so much like my own that I wanted to include it in this post. Like me, she talks about the boy she was dating at 19 – a talented musician just like her – and how painful it was to reconnect with him twelve years later. He’d created a successful music career while she’d been too busy with babies, diapers and housework to pursue anything of her own.

@lifetaketwo

Girls shoukd have the same opportunity as boys. Period. #tradwife #extrad #extradwife #whenwomenwin #feminist #sahm #couples #relationship #marriage #wedding #fiance #love #dating #romance

♬ original sound – Jennie

As mothers, we can love our children while not always loving what we gave up to be stay-at-home moms. As a community, we can also mourn the loss of the artists, scientists, creators, doctors, researchers, teachers (and rocket scientists!) we’ve collectively missed out on by pushing so many women into domestic labor only. I would’ve loved the opportunity that most LDS men seem to take for granted, which was the ability to have both a family and accomplishments, goals and ambitions outside of the home. I hope the next generation of girls can forge a different path than mine was able to. (Texas Instruments has some really cute shirts in Lehi if they want to go grab one!)