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Ann Piening McMahon was one of 11,000 workers laid off by McDonnell
Douglas in St. Louis. For ten years she worked as a laser communications satellite specialist. Not a job that's easy to find.
Less than half of her fellow pink-slipees were able to find full-time jobs. And most who
did took a pay cut. With these odds, it was up to McMahon at age 32 to do some creative,
career strategizing.
The first thing she did was take a good hard look at her natural abilities. At age four
she remembers pretending to be an inventor. By ten she was
fascinated with astronomy. In junior high she won a Earth Watch scholarship which enabled
her to spend a summer at a Nantucket observatory with a professor from Yale. And in high
school she placed ninth in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and won another
scholarship. At McDonnell Douglas Ann McMahon often spoke to junior high girls about her
role as a woman in science.
If this were your history, what kind of career would you invent?
Today, with a supply of balloons, trash bags and the imaginations of her young audiences,
McMahon teaches science to pre-schoolers billed as the Science Lady. On the weekends she
does birthday parties as the Science Magician or Serendipity.
But teaching is the least of what Ann McMahon does for the children she meets. She shows
them how scientific they already are with their natural curiosity and their questions,
always wanting to know why.
How's that for a right-brain solution to the left-brain problem of finding a job?
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