Gamers With Lives - Lara Crigger

Gamers With Lives Episode 9 - Lara Crigger

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Sean McKenna hosts a series of interviews starting with the GWJ Conference Call podcasters and guests. This month Sean talks to the brilliant Lara Crigger.

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Produced by Sean McKenna

Comments

Great interview as always, Sean, and one I've been waiting for since the series started.

And not to diminish the contributions of Katherine Johnson or any of the other women doing the computations for NASA, but the picture I think Lara is referring to early in the interview is this one of Margaret Hamilton, head of the MIT team that created the guidance software for the Apollo missions, standing next to a stack of the printed code:
IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Margaret_Hamilton.gif)

FeralMonkey wrote:

And not to diminish the contributions of Katherine Johnson or any of the other women doing the computations for NASA, but the picture I think Lara is referring to early in the interview is this one of Margaret Hamilton, head of the MIT team that created the guidance software for the Apollo missions, standing next to a stack of the printed code:

Good spot. Happy to be put right on this

Interesting parallels between Lara's college experience and mine, though I was in Computer Engineering then Computer Science then Information Systems before throwing it all out and studying Philosophy and Psychology. Naturally, none of my jobs since have had anything to do with my degrees.

Anyway, I was really good at math, really liked computers and enjoyed the programming classes I took in high school (Basic and Fortran). Mix all that together and I'm doing computers! Turns out I hated the schooling and once math turned too theoretical I completely lost any interest. When you hate all your major classes and love all your other classes maybe that's the wrong major for you. (I'll still never under and why a computer engineering degree required me to take micro and macro economics.)

So soft sciences it was! And partying. Lots of partying because I was running away from mental stuff.

Definitely different paths, but I can relate to being good at something but not really wanting to do that. I'm still paying for my waffling though, it took me forever and a day to complete my undergraduate degrees and then I did part of a masters before realizing that wasn't for me. I racked up a moderate amount of student loan debt that has been negatively affecting me since. Now I know I probably should've taken some time off from school to figure out what I really wanted to do. I was too damn stubborn to ask for help though.

Thanks once again Sean, and Lara, good stuff.

Thank you for the podcast interview. I really enjoyed it.

I was really, really looking forward to hearing Lara's interview. I've missed The Heroine's Journey so much, but honestly... I totally get Lara's position, and I probably would've done the same. Sometimes, it's just safer to fall back, than to keep fighting. And it's exhausting to keep fighting.
Anyhow, it was great to hear so much about astrophysics, and I found myself nodding along at a lot of what was said about working in a lab, and later down the road, motherhood. Society puts so much pressure on women and motherhood, it's nice to hear something a bit different from the "standard" take.
Anyhow, I'm pretty much rambling at this point, but I just wanted to give a big thumbs up to Lara Crigger and Sean McKenna: this was a great interview, and thank you so much to the both of you!

FeralMonkey wrote:

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Margaret_Hamilton.gif)

I'm late to this party, but I knew that this was the photo as soon as it was mentioned. At the start, though, I thought she was going to bring up Carolyn Porco, who is an amazing scientist rather than an amazing engineer like Margaret Hamilton. She was on the imaging team for Voyager, and led the imaging team for Cassini.

Before I listened to this podcast, I got the impression from the GWJ CC that Lara was a pretty awesome person.

Opinion confirmed. Rock on.