What do you want to be when you grow up?

Two videos were brought to my attention today that are sort of related involving learning and careers.

The first has inspired me to learn how to code better. This is timely with SportCafé looking for someone to help with programming. I am not suggesting at all that this would be me, but improving my coding will make me a better Editor and Blogger and who knows where it can take me in the future.

"It's not unlike playing an instrument or playing a sport. It starts out being very intimidating but you kind of get the hang of it over time."

The second focuses on girls, which is timely with the conversations I have been having with Fast and Female this week and the International Canoe Federation proposing a plan that would improve gender equality in canoe (although not as early as many would prefer to see). The video is an ad for a toy company, but you don't realize it until the end. It definitely gets us to think about how girls have been parented especially in the past few decades with the focus on pink, princesses and ponies - not that there is anything wrong with them, but we shouldn't focus only on those options.
   

"GoldieBlox, a toy company out to show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses. We believe that femininity is strong and girls will build the future — literally. 

Our founder, Debbie Sterling, is a Stanford engineer who decided last year that girls need more choices than the pink aisle has to offer. She developed GoldieBlox, an interactive book series + construction set starring Goldie, the kid inventor who loves to build.

This year, we wondered what we could do to showcase the amazing inventive power that girls have. So...we might have recruited three young girls and that guy who made OK Go's famous Rube Goldberg machine to turn an average home into a massive, magical contraption."

Lyrics:

Girls.

You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pretty it's girls.
Just like the 50's it's girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and everything else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we'll grow up like them... false.

It's time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
'Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.

Girls.
That's all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it's Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don't underestimate Girls.

They're both excellent videos that everyone (not only the young) should see.

What do you want to be when you grow up?