I saw the video below, which is Rachel Riley being asked questions about her maths education at a Your Life event, in a tweet by Rob Loe, who quoted a section of one answer around 4:50 where Rachel says: “stop saying proudly that ‘I’m really bad at maths’ because you wouldn’t say ‘I can’t read’, you wouldn’t say ‘I can’t write’ as a proud thing.”

What particularly caught my ear was this section (around 5:30):

I was looking into going into engineering … I wanted to do something in industry, I didn’t know what … I went to a careers fair that was specifically for scientists and the people they’d sent to those fairs weren’t sure what to do with me — they recommended the accounts department. So I think there’s more to be done between universities and industry to realise what skills — especially for me: mathematicians — have, and working with degrees and universities to make sure that what you’re learning there is then applicable.

I recognise this frustrating situation, and I’d say this describes fairly well part of what I am supposed to do in my new job when I’m not teaching maths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVfodGOVFJI