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Your Etch A Sketch creations
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Posted October 17, 2008
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Berkeley, California
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Etch-a-Sketches
The above are a few of over 150 sketches featured at http://mariam.elnaggar.googlepages.com which has (and continues to feature) a new etch-a-sketch once a week, every week, since Spring of 2006. I've also dabbled in videos, whether in real time-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9OwAGe6G2k or using compiled sets of images http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P0CmrwYj_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AMPFfvStro I got my first etch-a-sketch in 3rd grade. My family was traveling to see extended family abroad and it was a 17 hour flight: my folks wanted to ensure I'd sit still; and, with the exception of my hands, I did. A few years down the road, in college, I was attending an academic conference where I received a pocket-etch-a-sketch at a coorporate hospitality suite, and it all came back to me: the calming sensation of watching images appear, the relief of a hand-eye-coordination workout, and the satisfaction of the end products. Even today, as a doctoral candidate, (my proper job is as a graduate student researcher in chemistry at UC Berkeley where I am working in bioanalytical tech development and applications), I find the etch-a-sketch still harnesses some of the nervous energy, letting me go about the rest of my business more effectively. (I'm pretty quick, so I'd say cranking something out once a week in 20 minutes or so isn't taking away from my research progress, and sometimes I get decent ideas while doing something so orthogonal to my actual work.) The pictures have also let me sometimes* engage an audience that might not otherwise be reached to talk about science, which I feel would benefit from being in the public sphere a little more. (*Granted, I just draw pictures of whatever I've been thinking about in any given moment: video games, webcomics, or assorted miscellaneous geekery. But once every couple of weeks, a sense of responsibility for advancing the field kicks in and I draw something science related. It's all fun, anyhow.)
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