Perhaps it was pure coincidence, but I was born around the time that artificial satellites were first put into orbit around planet Earth.
The Sixties, when I was in school, were exciting times, when massive strides were being made in meteorology thanks to these satellite images. Meanwhile, I was happily ensconced in Clonaslee girls National School, Co Laois, where one of my teachers was my mother, Anne. Apart from sums, my favourite class was art, which my mother took on as an extra every Friday. She supplied all the materials herself because in those days art was considered a luxury. Even now, I get people coming up to me, from the four corners of Ireland, saying what a wonderful teacher she was.
Unlike nowadays, there was no science or nature studies. I am constantly amazed by the number of letters I get from children doing projects in weather and science. A lot of teachers run mini weather stations with their students, who among other things, learn how to take measurements of temperature and rainfall. They acquire the discipline of taking readings at the same time every day and then compiling them in a meaningful way. I believe that far more resources could be pumped into science in national schools. We should nurture and develop children's innate interest in science. It's no accident that we have a crisis in numbers taking physical sciences at second and third level.
It really annoys and saddens me when I hear of teenagers opting for biology at Leaving Cert and dismissing physics and chemistry as boring and or/difficult.
I was lucky that my secondary school, Convent of Mercy, Moate, Co Westmeath, had a very good science lab and I was able to take physics and chemistry for my Leaving Cert. Take it from me, you don't have to be a genius to get honours in these subjects. Physics and art were my favourite subjects. Unfortunately, I was useless at sports but I did bash away at tennis and badminton. I managed to reach grade six on piano and I was in the back row of the chorus in our school operettas and choirs, which, despite my contributions, were quite famous at the time.
Taking science at UCD was simply a matter of following in my brother Denis's footsteps (he teaches maths and physics at Gonzaga) and my sister Anne's (who teaches maths in Loreto Bray). In the late 1970s, the majority of female science undergraduates took biology-related courses but for me, physics held all the promise of unravelling the secrets of the universe. Thanks entirely to Dr Se O'Connor, I also managed to obtain a master's degree in physics.
There are no meteorology degree courses in Ireland and entrance to Met Eireann requires an honours degree in physics or mathematics, since meteorology is simply the physics of the atmosphere. Almost everyone in Ireland has some degree of interest in the weather and from the many letters we receive we know people enjoy and appreciate explanations and discussions about the science of meteorology and, of course, such issues as global warming and climate change.
