When I was in high school, I attended a small seminar in the school cafeteria for kids interested in engineering. I was the lone female.

When I arrived on my college campus four years later, the engineering and medical schools were teeming with female students. My closest friends were working in labs and out in the field - collecting data, studying variants and moving science, and our female role in it, forward.

So where have all those gals gone? Studies say women have moved away from tech fields in recent years.

A study last year from the National Science Foundation shows a staggering drop in the number of women who chose to study computer science in the last 30 years. According to the study, in 1984, women accounted for 40 percent of computer science majors. In 2014, that number dropped to 18 percent.

Why?

CNN suggests that the field is considered boring, too male dominated, and a place where women are still regarded as foreign rather than part of the team. Read the full article here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/31/tech/women-computer-science-halt-catch-fire-feat/index.html

Mommas, let your babies grow up to be engineers, computer programmers and software developers. Technology-based careers are some of the fastest growing fields in the nation. Jobs are plentiful, the pay is outstanding and employers have a really hard time filling a lot of these slots. There are simply not enough talented professionals to take on these tasks.

Don't believe me? Check out the stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/home.htm

And if you are looking for a second career, this is your chance to enter a field that needs dedicated professionals.

Girls can compete. Girls can excel. Girls can be a force in technology. We just have to remind them that they can and give them the confidence and the tools to excel.

When your daughter signs up for after school activities this year, suggest the science club and then be there to support those awesome kids. Get excited about the science fair. On your next family vacation, make visiting the science center a priority.

You never know when you may light the spark that changes the world.

The FBI says men of Middle Eastern descent are approaching military families and intimidating them. These families are believed to have been monitored by the men.

Why is this not at the top of the headlines?

The alert was issued earlier this week. I found it only by Googling the term, military family.

According to CBS News, the men came to the homes of several military families in Colorado and Wyoming. They asked questions about their military members’ jobs. They tried to gain personal information. They were intimidating.

Read the full story here: http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/08/04/fbi-middle-eastern-men-intimidating-u-s-military-families-in-colorado-wyoming/

This comes on the heels of the DOD warning military families that our enemy was here. In the U.S. And they were targeting family members.

Turns out, they are in our own front yards. And they are not afraid.

The FBI is monitoring the situation. Congressional members are concerned.

I think I’m not alone is saying military families are outraged.

Ladies, be aware. Watch the vehicles that travel your neighborhoods. Lock your doors at night. Set your alarms. Know where your children play during the day.

The fact that our families have been contacted and intimidated in our own front yards by our enemy is disturbing. The fact that it doesn’t make the top of the news that night is horrifying.

It’s time to watch each other’s backs. It’s time to go to your commands and demand to know what they are doing to keep our families safe. It’s time to make your own plan to protect yourself and your children.

This should not be at the bottom of the newsreel. This should be front and center. Our military families sacrifice enough without being intimidated in their own homes. Call your senators, call your commanders. Make them address this. Now.

We were in our new house for just a week when my civilian neighbor irritated the you know what out of me.

She sent her children over, a teenager and a four-year-old, to ask to borrow a can of spaghetti sauce.

We live within walking distance of a really nice grocery store.

But you know, she had just gotten off of work.

And she didn't feel like going.

Her husband was due home any minute.

So, she sent her children marching across the street to us.

We had been in our house for a matter of days. A house, that was flooded with six inches of water in every room when we arrived earlier that week. A house that was filled with work crews trying to remove that water, the debris and every piece of floor, wall and cabinet that was ruined as a result.

We had boxes stacked in the driveway, in the shed, on top of our vehicles, everywhere but inside the house where they belonged. There was too much water to move in. And we had to sort through the disaster while still working both of our full-time jobs. As brand new employees we had yet to earn any time off.  

I couldn't find a dry spot of flooring, let alone a can of spaghetti sauce. And by the way, our kitchen had been ripped out two days prior. We didn't have food in the house. There was nowhere to cook.

 So, I went to see my new neighbor. And I politely explained that we just didn't have any sauce to give.

Oh, I know, she said. But you have so many kids I figured you would have extra food. Then she reminded me how tired she was. She had worked all day. Her husband was tired, he had worked all day. She couldn't possibly call him to pick up a can on the way home.

And inside my mind, I was screaming, you have got to be freaking kidding me.

This was our introduction to civilian life. My husband had just retired. We moved to a non-military town, with non-military motivation.

And while I had always known how incredibly self-motivated and capable military spouses were, and figured we were a little better at managing chaos better than the average gal, this left me wondering how some people managed to function on a daily basis.

She spent all day at her office, located around the corner in our small town, next to the really nice grocery store and minutes from our neighborhood but couldn't bother to pick up a can of spaghetti sauce?

Meanwhile, daily life on a military base includes seeing multiple ladies carting multiple children to school events, extra-curricular activities, and at least one kid who is throwing up into the commissary to get a single bottle of baby Tylenol, all while their husbands are deployed. And, they probably had at least one household item, tire or car engine die within that week.  

They are not just tired, they are exhausted. They haven't had a full night's sleep in months. They carry the entire load of their household and sometimes the community, as these ladies are also the ones who step into multiple volunteer roles.

They spend many days of these deployments managing emergencies, tending to military families facing death and destruction and overcoming the chaos that comes with war.

My civilian neighbor was struggling to overcome the fact that she didn't have a can of spaghetti sauce.

I looked around my broken house, at the giant, noisy machines whirring and sucking the water out of my home and was suddenly very thankful for the Army. For throwing me to the wolves, for teaching me how to cope and reminding me that yes, this too will not just pass, but will get better.

Then I hustled all five kids into the car and we drove to the grocery store and stumbled through the aisles as they whined and cried and complained. We made spaghetti on the grill that night, and saved some for my husband who didn't get home from his job until almost 10 p.m.

And it was the best meal ever.

A poignant post on Twitter today:

USA Fill in the blank daily news report:

A  __­­______ entered a _______ and opened fire with a ______. __________ people were killed. Pray

for ___________.

Before yesterday’s attacks at a movie theater in Louisiana there were 203 mass shootings in the United States. Since Jan. 1.

In 2013, there was a shooting in which more than one person was injured or killed every. Single. Day.

We will leave flowers. We will gather by candlelight. We will shake our heads in disgust.

And then we will go home. And do nothing.

And tomorrow, it will happen again.

Why is this an acceptable way to live?

Why is going to the movies dangerous? Why can’t children sit in a classroom without fear of being killed?

These atrocities will not stop until we stop them. Sometimes, that means limiting the guns.

No one needs a weapon powerful enough to mow down dozens of people in a matter of seconds.

No civilian needs the same amount of firepower that a soldier on the field of battle is armed with.

Think long and hard about your love for guns, America. And then make the right choice.

Or will it take burying your own child, who was shot while doing math homework in their tiny desk at school, before you see the senselessness?

There are no words.

What could we possibly say to comfort you? To give you peace? To make this right.

There are no words.

When we send our service members overseas to fight, we internally prepare ourselves for the worst.

When we receive stateside orders, that placement is our safe time. Our break from the risks of war.

To lose a spouse, father, son, friend in war is heartbreaking.

To lose them here at home, to a wartime act, where we expect to be safe, where life is supposed to be ok, that, is agonizing.

There are no words to make this heartache stop. To undo the horror.

Please know, we are grieving with you and you are in the thoughts and prayers of each and every one of us.

Semper Fi.

Some of you will lose your job in the next few months.

The Army announced this week that 40,000 active duty soldiers will be pink-slipped in an effort to wrangle the defense budget. Another 17,000 civilians will also be sent packing.

While the cuts have loomed for months, this week's announcement finally laid out the location for those cuts. Every base on the planet will lose personnel. The states of Alaska and Georgia will be hardest hit.

The first round of dismissals will come this October and roll through the next two years.

Which means, if you are in that group, you have just a few months to put together your resume and hit the ground running.

Losing a job, especially a job you love, is one of the hardest transitions. And these cuts have nothing to do with performance or an individual's ability. This is math. This is lack of money. Nothing more.

And it will be hardest on those who are removed from the ranks and sent home. It's hard to understand why, after doing your best and sacrificing everything, that you would be told, 'You are done.'

We know it is coming. Now, we need to prepare for it.

Unlike some layoffs that come without warning and happen in the course of a day, luckily, military members and their families have several months to prepare.

Trust me, this makes you very lucky.

Head into the transition office on base and have the staff their help you prepare your resume. They can also prep you for civilian job interviews and develop successful talking points.

Begin scouring job ads. Consider where you want to live, because now, you get to choose. Consider what kind of career you want to grow, because again, now, you get to choose.

Leaving the military is hard. But this transition is a chance for you to appreciate what you've gained in the military and to move forward and thrive.

It's a chance to pick a job that will allow you to be home, with no deployments. To make more money. To wear any clothes you want, every day.

Begin looking at college options. You could use your GI-Bill benefits and go back to school. Full-time students often qualify for living expenses while they attend.

There is no question the next few months are going to be awful for a lot of military households. Take a night. Mourn the end of this career. Complain and moan about the leadership and those darn senators and their budgets. Get it out.

Then, the next morning, get moving.

The end of this era is the beginning of amazing opportunity.

Military children matter.

And school officials better start understanding this fact.

That's the message sent by a recent study conducted by the Army's top officials. In 2013, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno launched an evaluation of local schools that hosted large numbers of military children. He was looking for schools that were not meeting baseline education standards.

An additional independent study confirmed what most military families know - many schools outside of major Army bases stink.

Our children have attended half a dozen schools during our moves. A few were good. Most, were awful.

When I met with a principal at one school principal in North Carolina outside of Fort Bragg to discuss a disturbing situation in my child's classroom the principal said, you will be gone in two years anyway. It doesn't really matter.

It doesn't really matter.

A school principal said this about my military child.

Schools see us as expendable. As students who really have no place in their school, who are just hanging out until the Army sends them elsewhere.

That is disgusting.

Especially since these school receive money from the U.S. Department of Education through the Impact Aid program which attempts to fill the gap between the number of students brought into a district via military orders and the property taxes those families are not paying because they live on base.

I know the Impact Aid program isn't a windfall but these students are part of the community. They are part of this school. For their time there, they see this as home.

And as these students struggle to adjust and deal with parents who are deployed or injured, the center of their universe, their school, has told them that they simply don't care.

And so far, there has been absolutely no repercussion for school systems who treat military children as less than equal.

Hopefully, that will change. Military budgets are dwindling. Less is being spent on programs for military families. Even the Army wants to make sure it is getting the most bang for its buck.

So as military leaders are considering what bases to close and re-align, the attitude and performance of the local school system may play an important part.

Both top defense officials and writers of the study suggest that the military will consider poor performing school systems to be part of the catalyst in closing a military base.

And what happens when you close a military base? Civilian jobs disappear, by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, and the community looses hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The thought that a bad school system could be blamed for the crushing economic blow to its community makes me giddy.

Quite frankly, these school systems that see military children as a burden to be ignored until they are moved on do not deserve to be part of a military community. Military families need communities that support them and see them as part of their hometown for as long as they are lucky enough to live there.

I know that most military members try their best to make each duty station feel like home and be part of the community. Often, when a family makes a PCS move, a tiny hole is left behind in the community, where they volunteered, made friends and were part of what made that town great.

It is only fitting that the worst school systems who are tasked with caring for our military children, and refuse to do so, should not only loose every single military child and every military dollar that comes with them, but should also shoulder the blame for the staggering economic downfall their town will suffer as a result.

I implore military leaders to follow through and put the education of our military children at the top of their priority list. Make our civilian school systems understand that military children don't need a babysitter, they deserve a quality education too. And if they are not interested in providing it, the military will move to a community that will. 

Did you or your spouse ever apply for a security clearance to work for the military? For a government job?

You may want to start paying attention, to both the news and your personal data.

Earlier this month the government announced that hackers had stolen federal government data for thousands of government employees. The finger was pointed at China and little more was said.

That may be because it's bad. It's real bad.

The Navy Times reported that the stolen info is from "tens of thousands of Standard Form 86s". That is the 127-page document which anyone who applies for a security clearance must fill out.

The forms are a treasure trove of personal information. They include bank information, social security numbers, addresses, job assignments and more. And not just for the applicant. For everyone the applicant notes on the form as a reference.

So how at risk are people?

The government isn't being forthcoming.

Earlier this week lawmakers questioned the Office of Personnel Management, which handles the DOD's background checks. The Navy Times reported that OPM officials knew the data was vulnerable.

An OPM spokesman said those individuals who may have had data stolen will be contacted, as soon as possible.

And in the meantime, we all just may want to be a little more proactive.

Check your bank and credit card statements, often. Get your free credit score report with three major credit bureaus. Be mindful of who is contacting you and why.

If you haven't been vigilant about keeping track of your personal information, now is the time.

This week the U.S. Labor Department said there are more jobs available in the U.S. now than at any point in the last 15 years.

So, why are you still having a hard time finding a job?

Experts say employers are not just looking for new hires, they are taking their time finding the right new hires.

Labor Department reports say the number of open jobs jumped 5.2 percent to 5.4 million, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Experts, the Monitor says, believe this means employers see the recent sales slump as a result of a miserable winter, not an overall trend.
 

As a result, they are opening more positions to prepare for higher customer demand during summer months.

Even with all those jobs, hiring in the same month fell.

The Monitor reports that experts say this means employers are looking for more than a warm body to fill these spots. In fact, the paper reports that employers say they are having a hard time finding qualified workers.

And that tosses the ball firmly into our court.

Are you looking for a job? You now need to consider that process to be your fulltime job.

Look over your resume, consider hiring a professional resume writer to proof it or even re-write it for you.

Reconsider your skill sets. Were you a substitute teacher at your last duty station? Look at the skills you have and how those can be applied to other fields and jobs. Tailor your resume and cover letter to every single job you apply for rather than blanket every employer with a bland, one-size-fits-all approach.

Do you need to go back to school? You might. What additional certifications or credentials might put you ahead of the pack?

Swallow your pride. Be an intern. If you have the right skill set to switch fields, but not the experience, you may have to spend a year volunteering or serving as an intern, without pay. The experience you gain will help boost your resume and may be invaluable when it comes to finding a job in the future.

Employers are hiring. Jobs are there.

It is time to take a hard look at yourself and prepare yourself to stand out from the stack of resumes on their desk.

Kids benefit by having a working mother.

That’s the word from Harvard Business School where academics conducted a recent study. They said daughters with working mothers earned 6 percent more than women whose moms never worked outside the home.

Boys benefit too, it said. As grown men they spend an average of 7.5 more hours a week caring for their children and 25 more minutes doing chores.

My first question though, what types of jobs did the moms have?

Are they professional business women who leave the house, looking the part and, while exhausted from working, still have the help they need to pull it altogether? Can they afford childcare? Do the kids have summers full of camp and new clothes and the long awaited vacation, all of which moms’ paycheck makes possible?

Or are they moms who have to work to put basic food on the table? Who run in and out, harried from one to two and even three jobs in hopes that a family member can babysit. Maybe she leaves her children with the oldest sibling even if they may not be quite of age to do so. The money keeps the lights on. It doesn’t pay for vacations or camp.

If I had to guess, I’d say these women in the study were of the second group. Their children have seen the rough life. They’ve seen their mother struggle. They’ve seen the exhaustion. And they are ready to put a stop to it.

And that is a good thing.

I don’t want to see any family struggle. It is heartbreaking. And many of my friends are single moms, with no help from their former spouse or family.

What I love to see is them rising above. They work. Harder than anyone I have ever seen. They go to school with the little money they can scrape up, searching every late night for scholarships on the internet. They volunteer and are always the first to bring food in for class parties even though they are struggling to buy groceries. Heck, they find time to run because they can’t afford to join the local gym.

Their kids see this. They see what is possible. They learn that giving up is not an option.

And even for the kids whose moms seem to pull it all off without ruffling a single hair, watching their mothers work and achieve success as an individual person, and not just as someone’s mom, is a wonderful gift.

The Pew Research Center also recently found that society is not as excited about our individual potential as we are. The group found that 41 percent of American adults say the increase in the number of mothers working outside the home is bad for society.

It is bad to expand our abilities? It is bad to strive to make our lives and that of our family better? It is bad to teach our children that you can achieve a goal and make a difference in your community? 

Is it bad to make the decision that you have to take charge of your household and be the breadwinner, even if that means some sacrifice?

It is not.

Working moms, you got this. And we all benefit from having you working hard every day to make our entire world a better place.