Mars Rover Competition

I decided to volunteer as a judge and I’m glad I did. I’ve always been the one to want to support and be a part of events involving kids. I love when I see kids doing positive things, so who am I to not want to encourage that. I remembered doing science competitions as a child and even attending my younger brother’s robotics competition. They hosted the competition at the University of Houston. I like when things are hosted at colleges because it gives kids a chance to see farther than just high school; giving them something to achieve and look forward to. I saw many amazing projects considering every team had a $25 spending limit. But the whole time I had developed a hypothesis on why there are more males than females that participate in these science and even math competitions. By the end of the day I was pretty sure that I had perfected my theory. At the elementary level, the girls seemed to outnumber the boys surprisingly but at the middle school level, it was the other way around. Girls mature faster so at the elementary school level they have the smarts and love competing and showing off, kind of like knowing you have the best Barbie doll house so you want to show it to all your friends. Then the girls get to middle school and have been influence by the outside society pointing out that it’s the pretty girls, and not the smart girls that seen to get far in life. They start wanting to participate in things like cheerleading competitions and become consumed with fashion and their looks; also becomes a player in the game of “let’s chase the boys”. But in middle school, some boys aren’t even concerned with girls to that extent unless they are in a poverty driven or urban neighborhoods. Those are the neighborhoods that children are constantly bored in, so they turn to the opposite sex earlier on to put a stop to their boredom. So in conclusion, my theory is that girls have the smarts and like to show off in elementary school, but then gets consumed with other things when they get to middle school so they start to weed out, and the males start to dominate the math and sciences because they finally realize they are intelligent as well, and now they have also developed a competitive edge. Ha! I’m not a scientist but it made sense though. 😛