The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
@hooser's aside about being a mathematician who's benefited from "get more women into math" initiatives despite not necessarily believing in them, reminded me I wanted to ask:
What can I do to help out my mathy daughter?
Her dad and I are both everything-but-math types (like Scott); she OTOH is so far shaping up to be your stereotypical math-and-music kid. She's very young, maybe she'll stop being mathy or w/e, but if she stays mathy...I just wonder how to help her in the future. (Right now we homeschool.)
From my own experience and studies I recall reading, seems like affinity groups have been the most effective way to help minorities-in-a-field achieve to their potential. IOW, put people who have an interest in the field and are not in the majority-in-the-field in contact with one another. (As opposed to "try to change the field to be more in line with the targeted identity group's average group preferences" or some such.) I did see an online group for mathy girls 5th grade and up, maybe that'll be good for when she's older...
So, any math-and-music types here, what would you have wanted someone to tell your parents?
I highly recommend Math Circles, if there is one in your area. Typically, a Math Circle is a group of kids of about similar age who meet once a week for like a semester to explore an interesting math idea. Such circles get organized and led by mathematicians (professional or amateur), and they can start quite young. For example, "Math from Three to Seven" (or great review of the book) is basically a diary of a guy running a Math Circle for his young kids and their friends.
At their best, the kind of activity the kids do in a Math Circle actually models an authentic mathematical exploration. Even when not at their best, it gets your daughter together with other kids who are interested in math, and connects you with at least one math adult who is interested in math outreach for kids and will therefore probably know of other local opportunities for STEM extracurriculars.
People mean different things when they say "math". For many not in the field it means doing drills or word problems, which at best are skill challenges posed by others for educational purpose, and do not--cannot--reflect authentic problems that require a mathematical approach. The authentic problems are messy; they are vague; you have to choose what to measure and how, and what to define and how, and sometimes all your options are but poor approximations, and sometimes you can't even begin to tackle the problem as is until you have considered many much simpler similar problems that may (you hope) give you ideas on how to approach the big messy one. That's what "math" is to a mathematician, and those are great problem-solving skills to practice no matter where your life takes you.
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