Smart Girls
By Nadine Holder
February 2007


Reference: Smart Girls (Revised Edition), A New Psychology of Girls, Women and Giftedness, Barbara A. Kerr, PhD, University of Arizona, 1994.

This book was recently reviewed in one of the National Mensa Journals and even though the date was a little old it sounded intriguing. I had always just fluffed off my brain power as simple genetics and not thought much about what else contributed to, or detracted from it. I was shocked as I read through the studies outlined in this book that my life pretty well fit the template of the smart girls who grew into strong women based on the few studies that had been done

Genetics of course is a strong factor (although not studied by Barbara Kerr) and I have plenty of good genes from both sides of my family. My father’s ancestors had total recall. Wish I had gotten that one! I can visualize every book I’ve ever read in my life but I cannot reread the pages in my mind so what good is that! My mother, on her mother’s side, is descended from a 14th century English mathematician who was famous enough to be traceable in the family history. On her father’s side she is descended from a pair of sisters whose "descendants display the genius of the Hunt Sisters" according to the history books. One of the sisters was ancestress to the naturalists John and William Bartram. The other sister was my mother’s ancestress and of a less famous naturalist, Humphrey Marshall.

My parents were Wyoming ranchers but they were both avid readers and my father was forever recreating experiments that he read about. He had grown up in a fatherless home (his father died of tuberculosis at a very young age) and in total poverty but he managed to get through Normal School and become a teacher before he became a rancher. My mother owned the works of Shakespeare and a Ouiji Board and it is hard to say which had the most influence on me. My father took me to the local library every time we went to town and we brought home stacks of books. He always involved me in his ranch chores and in his experiments. My mother left the housework to me as she helped my father do the ranch work. Cooking over a wood stove in summer heat was one of my least favorite duties. I still hate cooking with a purple passion. And I am totally convinced that the horrors of housework drove me relentlessly to get an education.

One of the criteria for gifted girls becoming gifted women, as noted in several studies mentioned by Kerr, was having time alone. And boy did I have plenty of that. My parents were forever working and I was not allowed to tag along into the fields and only occasionally allowed on cattle drives when I got older so I was mostly home alone. But as they say "there is no frigate like a book to take you miles away" and I had plenty of animal companions (and still do!). From age 9 on, the country school near us was closed and I went away to school and was only home in the summertime. That ceased too when I finally got a summer job at age 15 and I never went home again. I pretty much supported myself after that except for a scholarship I got to a prestigious Women’s College for my freshman year and my parents paid for my board and room.

I didn’t get on well in the Women’s College - got good grades - but I missed boys and men - have always found them more interesting companions than women. That too was brought out in Barbara Kerr’s studies as she found that many gifted girls fell by the wayside by being trapped in society’s push for them to make good marriages. Somehow I missed out on that - the whole hair and makeup and clothing obsession just never made it into my conscious mind. In high school I rode horseback on the weekends with my best friend, also a tomboy, and several of the local boys. We had a great time, picking up pop bottles off the side of the road from the back of running horses to get money for our picnic lunches. And we enjoyed close relationships with horses and learned to respect them. Another fun pastime was my girl friends and I having hitch hiking races with a group of boys. Of course the girls always won as they got rides much easier than the boys did. In a way it is too bad that it is too dangerous a pastime for teenagers today as we got to see some of the big cities (including Denver, Colorado) on our weekend junkets. We learned how to find our way around in the world and have fear of nothing. We were always making trouble in school and pushing for more equality for girls in education. The principal scathingly referred to us as "those girls off the curb" whatever that meant. We were forced to play girl’s rules in phys ed basketball so we started an after school women’s basketball team and played against boys teams across the state.

Of course my high school principal was aware of my interests and when my senior year test scores came in he called me aside and said there had been an error in my score as it was very high and that just wasn’t possible (despite the fact I had straight A’s except my forever C’s in English). He evidently did not put that opinion in writing, however, as it resulted in my scholarship to the Women’s College.

Another really big thing for gifted girls according to Kerr’s studies was having mentors. And boy did I have those. I was dyslexic (still am of course) and couldn’t learn to read. But my first grade teacher kept me after school and taught me to read out of her set of Arabian Nights. Those salacious tales were so intriguing that I just had to keep plugging away at it and eventually conquered reading. To this day I still have to be careful of misinterpreting something because I do not see the printed words correctly (maybe that is why the total recall doesn’t work!). I had a teacher in the sixth grade when I was living with an aunt and uncle in Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, who took the time and trouble to assess my math papers as I got nearly 100 percent wrong on them. She finally noticed that I got 100 percent correct the way I had written down the problem and deduced that I couldn’t see the blackboard correctly. She had my aunt and uncle get glasses for me and no problems with math after that. In High School my high school math teacher was in a wheelchair, having served in WWII but he was a master teacher. He hurt my feelings terribly by accusing me of copying from my fellow students when the opposite was the actual case - but he was a great role model of what someone could be despite a handicap.

And during all this time of course there was the societal push to keep women out of the more prestigious jobs and to keep them in the home. The Women’s College advisers did their best. They gave me all the aptitude tests and finally advised me to apply for an ambassadorship with the government. I looked into it and the first thing I noted was that it was necessary to have an independent income as they were not paid representatives of the United States. (Hope that has changed.) Well that let this gal out of that occupation. I was pretty discouraged and knew my folks were making a big sacrifice to keep me in the college. My high school friend was living in a small trailer in San Diego and going to the local State College. So I joined her and started at San Diego State and was able to support myself by working nights, first at one of the theaters and later as a waitress. I majored in Physics and got straight A’s. Wasn’t often able to go to class because of my work schedules but my instructors worked with me - my Chemistry instructor just told me it would be nice if I showed up once or twice during the semester but I always aced the exams because I did my homework! I was within three months of graduating as top student in Physics when they held their annual work fair. No one would even give me an application ("We don’t hire women" I heard over and over again. I then started asking for an application for an office job and was told I was overqualified - this was 1950ish.) I was so bummed out by this I didn’t even finish the year and graduate.

In a couple of years the hunger for education took over again and though I had married, I went back to school. I just looked at the curriculum and picked the one that looked most difficult and had the most variety in it and enrolled as an Anthropology major. It was fun - lots of history and we got to do the forensics for the San Diego Police Department on bodies that were totally decomposed. There were quite a few as Mexican immigration in that day was ever as it is now so we always had work to do. My degree didn’t take all that long as many of my math and science courses fulfilled undergraduate requirements. In later life I was able to go on a couple of anthropological digs in South America and it was a great experience.

With my new degree and my math background I was hired as a secretary for a local bank and finance company and had a great time there. I actually acted as Assistant Manager as the Manager was a lush and pretty completely useless. But we ran a tight ship without him and the company did very well. The company finally promoted a man to Assistant Manager and I went to work in the Collection Department. They wouldn’t let me work in the field but I had a fellow working with me that loved to do the field work so he could go play the stock market while he was out and about. I got sick of the work after awhile as we lived and worked on the Mexican border and our skips usually went to Mexico and we sent Mexican mafia after them and they got worked over pretty well but paid up. I just didn’t like that part of it. I left and went to work as secretary for the City Planning Director and was there for a couple of years but it appeared I would need more college work to become a Planner - they were just beginning to hire women.

I next got a job as Administrative Assistant to a Vice President at a firm in San Diego working on nuclear power supply. This guy was another lush and used to send me to all his meetings as his representative. So that was a masterful education - I always understood more than they thought because of my background in Physics and Chemistry. One of the men attending the meetings needed an engineer and couldn’t find one that suited what he needed. He needed a Chemical Engineer and told me if I could get a license he would hire me - I took the test and got my license and that was my breakout. This fellow was rough as all get out but he taught me a lot. I worked many years on nuclear fuel reprocessing development. I was the first woman to give a technical paper in Germany. I had been sent to Germany on an engineering exchange program for nuclear fuel reprocessing development and had written a paper for my German boss to give at a conference. When it was his turn to give the paper he stood up and introduced me and had me give the paper and then told me afterwards it was a first for a woman in Germany. This is the kind of mentoring I had.

When nuclear power development crashed in the late 70’s I worked for a sharp young fellow and with a fellow female engineer we developed a program for fluidized bed burning of coal that would allow coal burning energy providers to be able to meet newly forming environmental requirements. This was another fun time - we worked long hours - 12 hour shifts 7 days a week between the two female engineers to keep experiments running but we had charge of a wild bunch of technical assistants that were extremely talented and really stood up and helped us. Well some toad up the chain of command decided that they could hire two engineers fresh out of school and replace us at half the salary. Well that killed that program in a hurry as they were green as grass and had no practical experience. Besides I had worked for the company for 18 years and was due for layoff anyway as my retirement would vest at 20 years. Luckily, the state of California had passed legislation the year before that if they pulled that stunt they had to give you a "golden parachute" of so many dollars per year of service so I came out alright. In order to get some kind of retirement income I went back to work for the City of San Diego as my previous service would count. I worked 8 years as a Plan Review Specialist for the Building Inspection Department. This was another learning experience in becoming familiar with Building Codes.

By now I really fit Barbara Kerr’s profile of gifted girl expanding into strong woman and all the factors of alone time, mentoring, not fitting into molds, being different, were all there. I had also continued my education by getting a Master’s Degree in Public Administration before going to work again for the City, although I never had the slightest interest in a management position. Seemed way too dull to me!

So here I am retired in a beautiful place that reminds me of the Wyoming Ranch, with lots of wonderful alone time, intelligent and beautiful animals, and stacks of books. Living with the animals has been interesting as they can outwit me any day of the week. And the genetic line goes on - my granddaughter is at UCLA in her third year, taking multivariable calculus (I never got that far) along with her science classes. She has done her four year military service, including two years in the White House Honor Guard, and worked for Southwest Airlines long enough to earn her tuition. My grandson has done two tours in Iraq in the Marines and while not academically inclined (yet) works on diesel engines for a welding company that sends him around the country. Both credit me for mentoring them (I‘ll take it!).


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