Day in the Life: Thinking Like an Engineer—Why Critical Thinking Changes Everything

What separates someone who follows instructions from someone who leads, solves, and innovates?

In this episode, Kara Branch breaks down one of the most important—and often overlooked—skills in STEM: critical thinking. While many students are taught what to learn, far fewer are taught how to think, analyze, and solve problems in real-world situations.

Through the lens of a “day in the life” in STEM careers, this episode explores what critical thinking actually looks like on the job—from diagnosing problems and making decisions to navigating uncertainty without clear answers. Kara also highlights where the gaps exist today, sharing data on how students and even early career professionals are struggling with problem-solving and independent thinking.

This episode goes beyond awareness and focuses on action—what parents, educators, and communities can do now to build these skills early and intentionally.

Because in a world shaped by technology and automation, the ability to think critically isn’t just valuable—it’s essential.

🎧 Tune in to learn why critical thinking changes everything—and how to start building it today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Welcome back to Black Girls Deal Engineer Podcast. I'm Cara Branch, chemical engineer and founder and CEO of Black Girls Do Engineer. Today, we're talking about something that is quietly becoming one of the biggest gaps in our education system. Critical thinking. Because while technology is advancing, many students are not being trained to think through problems, analyze information, or make decisions independently. And if we're being honest, this is where we risk falling behind. So today, I'm breaking down what critical thinking really is, what it looks like in a real day in STEM, and what the data shows about, where our youth and even adults are lacking. Let's get into it. I had to do this podcast episode because in so many panels that I've been a part of and so many discussions, this is the word that keeps coming up, critical thinking. So I have developed my critical thinking skills over the years and is a huge part of my life. So I'm excited to dive back into this conversation around critical thinking and take myself out of being so highly trained to kind of talk about my journey a little bit because I really don't know how I can function in my roles as an engineer, as an entrepreneur, even as a mom. Man, I use critical thinking skills all the time through chaos. I use critical thinking skills. So it's just a part of my everyday life. But the sad part is it's not a part of so many. So I wanted to have this discussion, especially now that we're in our day in the life. We've had so many great discussions with so many women in STEM. If you've missed those episodes, you can follow up wherever you listen to your podcast, right? So let's talk about what critical thinking actually is and where those gaps start. One thing to note that students are being taught how to learn. So as parents, we see this our kids are learning so much, but not how to think. So this is some of the issues I have experienced as a parent. Your kids are going to school, bringing home all these things to do, right? And you may ask your child, for example, like, what did you do at school today? And you're watching them have a hard time explaining that to you. And a lot of times we can't just jump to conclusions that they didn't do anything at school. I've got to go to get that at the beginning too. Like, I'm not doing stuff at school. But yeah, we know they're doing stuff at school. And so it's like, why are they not comprehending? Why are they not remembering what they did? Those are because that are lacking those critical thinking skills. Or here's another example. Maybe your child and you are in a conversation, right? And you start using all these words. Now, some of them may be big technical words, but some of these are the words that, you know, those spelling tests and all those things that they are learning around reading comprehension in school that they should know. And have you ever had a conversation with your child and using those words and they say to you, what does that mean? What does that mean? They're learning them, but it's that thinking part of understanding that definition of that word to be able to understand the importance part of that conversation. So we got to get that thinking, that critical thinking element up in many youth. And as I said in my intro, even some adults, this is a lifelong skill, I believe. And we need to have that conversation about it, right? So, you know, I gotta give you some data. Like I am most definitely someone who loves data, right? Just call me the data queen. Because I love you bring data every day. So only 36% of our high school seniors here in the US, we'll say in the US, or considered proficient in complex problem solving. 36. That's not even half, right? They're not able to do that complex problem solving. That's that is most definitely a problem. That's an alarming number. And less than 40% of students feel confident analyzing information or forming independent conclusions. Again, going back to having that conversation with your kid and they can't understand or analyze those words that you're using. And I'm speaking solely from words at their grade level that they should know. Sometimes as parents, we do use thick words and they may not know it. But as our chance to explain it to help their minds think about it. But knowing that 40% of students are not even confident in analyzing or forming their own independent conclusion of something, that is also many classrooms are still prioritizing memorization over application. So their spelling B, they're remembering how to spell these words, but they have no deep understanding of what those words mean. This is a problem that is our job to solve. Now, I believe as a parent, yes, I need to send my children to school to learn, right? They spend many of the time throughout the day, several hours learning. But it is also my job as a parent to make sure my kids are learning and understanding what they're learning. And so I spent a heavily amount of time with that. And even as a parent, it's so hard to do, but it's something we have to do, especially for these technical roles. And these most definitely still positions that are so unfulfilled and the gaps are widening every day. And we have to be able to help our children not just excel in school, but know what they're excelling in. And then as you can see with the high school seniors data, we're proud of our children at that stage. They're doing great, especially our wonderful high school scholars. Kudos to you. But if we're not understanding what we're learning and how to solve problems, right? Complex problems and have those solving problem-solving skills. We're not doing any justice to critical thinking. So what is critical thinking? I know I've given you some data, I've given you some examples, but let's talk about what it really is. It's the ability to ask those questions, right? You want to ask questions. Questions is where it starts for me. Asking questions. That's the only way you can learn to understand something is by asking questions. So you want to be able to ask questions. I always tell the youth that I work with, especially the girls, no question is a wrong question, bad question. None of that. These questions are for you. You need to be able to ask questions to understand, right? And there's never too many questions that you can ask. You ask those questions until you fully understand. So asking questions, analyzing information. Now, this is the kicker. Many people don't like to sit down and do a deep dive into stuff and analyze it. I am one of those people where you do not believe everything you hear or see. Like you need to make sure you have facts for yourself. So I'm a huge researcher. I research all day, every day. That's me. That's what I do. I like to analyze information. I like to fully understand it through analyzation to be able to not just know it in my mind, but be able to say it to someone else as I want to test out the theory. Hey, do I know what I'm talking about? I analyzed it. Let me go have a conversation with someone about it. They fully understand what I'm saying. I could check out that box. Now, solve problems. Now, any STEM professional, solving problems is key. That's what we do all day, every day. Whether you go into the science arena and you're a chemist, maybe you're creating some type of product that is going to be beneficial to your consumer. You're in tech, maybe you are working on enhancing the AI principle or theory or application, right? You are an engineer building roads, building products to be able to have clothes, have all the things that we have. Maybe you're into space, right? Getting our entrepreneurs into space. You're in mathematics. Maybe you are that accountant who is trying to understand your revenue, your profit for the company, or areas that you can improve for that company to make that company better. In all these different positions, you are going to solve problems. And you have to have these solving problem skills. A lot of times, those solving problem modes are not done independently, but you're going to have to learn how to do them independently. And most definitely is going to happen in a team too. So you need to be able to sit down and solve problems. This can be at school. This can be at home. Maybe you want to cook, let's see, mac and cheese. That is a debatable dish. You've had it somewhere, you enjoyed it. Now you want to go home and make it at home. Now you may be making this mac and cheese and you run into an issue with your cheese and ain't cheesing, right? And so instead of giving up, you may want to step back in there, dust yourself out, and figure out how do I get that flavoring? How do I get that cheese effect? What am I missing? And you start using all different types of ingredients to get yourself to the mac and cheese that you were hoping for at the beginning. That's problem solving in the kitchen. You can problem solve outside. Maybe you're noticing too much is too many leaves are falling. So much is happening in your yard, or just so as you go outside, or maybe you walk to school and you can walk to school better. Maybe there is a system you can design for that. Or maybe you come over to rhythm to monitor the leaves, or you notice a pattern of when the leaves are gonna fall. So you prepare for that. You need to learn how to do that in every way. It's not just gonna help you solve problems, it is gonna make you quicker and better on your toes to do things, right? That's also life skills. But back to critical thinking skills. You have to be a problem solver. Make informed decisions. Now I know from my youth, I know a lot of times you like mommy and daddy don't, they have it. They're gonna make this decision. My grandmother knows best. My aunt always does that. So this she's that person for that. It's time for you to understand how to make informed decisions. This can be simple. It's as in the lunch line. You're getting lunch today. You might want to try some veggies because it's good for you. That's the decision you're gonna make for yourself for that day. Or are you in high school? You have so many colleges you want to go to, but you're gonna go make a decision to say, okay, I have my top three, but I need to go visit them. And I know I haven't talked to mom and dad or dad about this, but hey, I'm going to make that informed decision for myself and bring it to the table to let them know why I would like to do this, right? You have to learn how to make these informed decisions. It could be a small decision, a big one, but you have to start making them because they are a very critical part of your critical thinking skills. And one that many have learned at school, but we may not apply it to life as often to great work, cause and effect. So you need to understand your cause and effect. So a lot of times you can start with that problem, which is in this case is that effect, and learn what was the cause, right? You may have dropped something walking down the hallway, and you need to backtrack to say, oh man, how did I drop this? Was I moving too fast? Did I was I slipping? Was I not paying attention? Did I have too many things in my hand? Like you need to be able to analyze what caused you to drop that item, right? I'm gonna run them back because I've given you some examples, but I need you to understand what critical thinking is so that when you run into the world every day and all that you do, you can start practicing these things and applying them to your everyday life to get your critical thinking skills up. Because we can't just be out here learning. We have to be out here thinking. And that is a powerful tool to have for yourself and most definitely in the STEM career. So again, ask questions, analyze information. You want to solve those problems. Make informed decisions and understand cause and effects. That is what critical thinking is the ability to do all of those things. And it's important that we learn that I talked about data, but it's important to understand some of those gaps, right? The gaps is, students, you can repeat information, right? But you can struggle to apply it. You can struggle to explain why something works. Again, thinking. You have to be thinking. If you don't have critical thinking skills, it's going to be a lot of struggle. You're not going to understand why things work. You're going to be repeating yourself quite often or getting repeat information. And we have to get out of that mode. And the only way to get good at something is in applying these applications to your life on a daily basis. And don't have to be overwhelming. You can start small, maybe doing just one thing, just asking a question. If you're not much of a talker, or you may sit in class and you may not ask any questions, maybe this week would be the time for you to just ask one. And even if you don't get the right answer, or you felt like you was dismissed from that question, you try it again. You don't give up. Because you have to remember this is for you, not so much for the other person. This is for you so that you can learn and think while you're learning to enhance your critical thinking skills. So we have to stop teaching answers. We have to start building thinkers. So I want to just state that very clearly because we have to get these critical thinking skills up. Again, we've been talking about so much in many of those past podcast episodes, and I've been on many panels and in many rooms lately. And this has been the number one. There are two words, but I just keep hearing it. Critical thinking. And everyone's have been seeing the the why it's necessary. And many people have been saying people don't have them. And we have to talk about what that even is. So people can know what the importance is. So that's why I wanted to break down critical thinking. So I talked about some ways you know we can apply this in our real life. I gave a lot of examples, but I have to talk about some more things you can do from a day in a life perspective, because we're in our day in a life series, right? So I want to talk about a little bit more about what this can look like in so many roles because STEM careers I've mentioned require critical thinking. It's not just about task completion. And I want to say that most definitely for my college students and for people who are in the workforce. I know a lot of times we make that list, we want to get stuff done, but it's not just about task completion in the field, in the STEM field. So thinking is required. So I'll have some data for that. You know, I have to have to give you some data. So employers report that over 50% of recent graduates lack problem solving and critical thinking skills. Now, to my graduates, I'm not gonna pin that on you because this is probably I can I know this from working with youth. If it's not done at a very young age, then this habit is not gonna be built up and your critical thinking ability is just not going to be there. And you're gonna operate from the same state that you always learned to operate in, and that's just a learning state. So 50% is half of graduates, but that's still a big problem to fix. So for my college students, you have to start today. For my graduate students, you have to start today because your half of you are based on this data from your employers, are demonstrating where you are not using these skills. And as them professionals, these are required skills for us to be able to be great at what we do, but everything that we do, we have to remember the consumers of what we do. And that's the people part of it. Everything we create, everything that we design, everything that we build, there is people behind that. And we need to make sure we remain the top of the top and the best in the room because that's what our role is as professionals, to be the best at what we do so we can make it safe and the best for the people that's on the receiving end. And we need to be able to have great discussions where everyone come together and think and have an idea so that we can problem solve and create the best of the best products. That's our job. And so if you are finding yourself sitting in those meetings in your workplace and you are not being able to create those out-of-the-box ideas that you have within you, but you just have not been using critical thinking skills. You've just been on this learning path and checking off the box to get things completed, then you have to start using those critical thinking abilities I talked about at the beginning. Here's some more data. Six out of 10 employers say new hires struggle to make decisions without Qaida. Now, I can see that, but as a new hire, I want to stand outside just a little bit because I believe new hires have to be molded and trained. So for employers who's given this data, make sure you have trained your staff, right? To understand how your company works, right? And have given them that comfort level to make those decisions. But when you start filling your rhythm, and for my college students who are now working, you know what I mean by feeling your rhythm. Like you're feeling good. Like you understand you've been trained, you've worked on enough projects, and you are at a point where you know your idea matters. And that decision can be made without guidance, especially for my people. I know I worked in construction and oil and gas. You I have to make decisions that are fail all the time. And if you are an engineer leaning on these projects, you need to be able to stand in and make those decisions because those are timely decisions. If you're in those roles or you're in that space, you have to start making those decisions without guidance. I know a lot of times fear plays in, right? You're actually telling yourself, hey, whoo, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to mess up, I don't want to lose my job. All those things are valid. But mistakes, you have to make them to grow. So do your due diligence, use your critical thinking skills, and think about what all can go wrong. And make the decision that you know that's best and have the supporting details and documents to support that decision. And that's how this data will improve. And for yourself, you will be prepared to make those decisions. Many entry-level employees rely heavily on instruction instead of analysis. Task completion. We have to get out of checking those boxes, completing those tasks, instructions. I hire many interns and I give them a lot of tasks and instruction. But I can tell you, the ones that always have thrived, and I've had great interns, you know, shout out to my interns, but the ones who have always thrived have been the ones who can bring with it and analyze things and come back with solutions or different ways they would like to try or have that passion and interest in those analysis all tied in together to really take things to the next level. You cannot just need instructions. I've been in many leadership roles across many different industries, and I can tell you, I always analyze, hey, the environment and understood where myself was going to operate to the best of my abilities within any company. And I had to learn that instructions ain't always going to be given, especially in these roles, because so much is happening, so much innovation and so much just greatness, especially now, futuristic principles. And we are most definitely in a great next wave of innovation around so many things energy, tech, aerospace. But you have to sometimes understand what. Things are unclear. How can you make those clear? Do those analysis to understand what has been said from each one of your team members and bring your idea to the table and projects that you may want to see the company do with those supporting data and facts. And then that alone helps you get out of needing instruction to creating your own set of instructions and ideas and projects and helping the company blossom and blow. Instructions fall into that learning pattern or what to know, what to do. But critical thinking is taking it on and doing that analysis and thinking about what can be done and how making it happen, whether you work for somebody else or even if from entrepreneurs, if you work for yourself. But you have to stop thinking about checking the box. Because you can check a lot of boxes and not accomplish anything. If you ever found yourself getting tasks done and looking down the line and not seeing anything implemented from that task or anything happening, and you feel like you just wasted your time doing a whole bunch of work, this is why. Because nothing was thought through. Stuff is just being done, but nothing was being thought through to really make a real impact. So we got to get done with that. So that's some data in my perspective on that. When we're talking about days in a life, reality for different careers, like engineer. I'm an engineer, and this is what we do. We diagnose failures, we test solutions, we predict outcomes. All of that takes critical thinking skills. For my project managers, I just had a great project manager on a few weeks back. Go check out these episodes. Managing risk. That's what project managers do. Making decisions quickly, solving unexpected issues, critical thinking skills are required. Data roles. A lot of people should be thinking about these roles. No, that's the data, the data cleaner thing. Interpreting data, asking deeper questions, connecting patterns. That's what data roles do. Critical thinking skill. Okay. All those three roles I just talked about. We've had many different conversations with different engineers, project manager, data roles on here. I've had the pleasure to work it on. But go listen to their stories and hear them talk about critical thinking skills and how it plays a part in their role. And understand that they're not just checking out boxes. They are risk takers. They interpreting that data for those companies and telling those companies how to be better. They are testing solutions, predicting those outcomes and providing supporting documents and data and analysis to be able to help those companies. So again, stop checking these boxes. I know they feel good when you check off a box of your to-do list. Oh, they feel amazing. But again, think through those to-do lists and ask questions. So you can make sure you're not wasting time and you're getting great results. And if you work for some company that they are excelling, and if you work for yourself, you are excelling. But you have to become a thinker, a very critical thinker. So we know there's a lot of gaps there, right? Instructions. We got it, we got used to step-by-step instructions, right? We're always looking for clear answers. That's our mind. That's what we do as learners, right? But in real life, problems are unclear. Solutions are not given. Especially in these STEM roles, you are the solution creator. Okay. You're trying to solve that problem to make it clear. So you have to have critical thinking skills because in the real world, there is no answer key. It's beautiful when you're in school, in college, that answer key, right? That's that validation. As the critical thinking, thinking person or critical thinker, you are the answer key. Okay. So let's talk about really why these skills matter more than ever. And, you know, all that I do is from a community spec perspective. I love working with the youth and college students and serving as a mentor, providing my everyday knowledge. So we know who's at risk. Okay. From a community standpoint. But also there's a lot of people at risk just from not having this ability to be a critical thinker. So this is why it still matters. We're in a very heavy AI age. And there's still so many gaps there. I talk about AI literacy all the time. Right. And I'm going to continue to talk about it because there's so many gaps there. But critical thinking is the skill that AI cannot replace, right? AI is a great tool if we're not reading through it. And if we're not prompting correctly, we're just running with information. Critical thinkers wouldn't do that. We're going to think about what's being given to us and we're going to analyze it and we're going to make sure it's correct. And then we're going to decide if we want to use this information or not. I have to pause because this is one of the things I run into working with youth. And it just kind of made me want to do some expressing about how we have to really make sure we're reading over what is being produced by AI. It is a great resource, a great tool, but we cannot let it replace what our mind can do, the ability of thinking. We will surely not be able to rise to our fullest potential without the ability to think. Your brain is what's going to set you apart. And as we continue to use resources today, a lot of tech resources as AI, the truth is it's becoming clear that things are not authentic. You can clearly see it. And the truth is people still look for you to be true to you and who you are and be your authentic self. You mean that think that as when you're around your peers, that you may all do the same things and it may be normal to you. But you have to think outside of the world of your peers. You have to think about the people from every generation. And you also have to think about what the world is going to require going forward. And everyone has different needs and requirements when they're looking for people to fill within their STEM roles, when they're looking to, if you're an entrepreneur, fund you. I mean, there's so many things that play a factor, and people want you to still be your authentic self. And so we can't let all the amazing tech resources that we have at our fingertips replace our mind and our ability to think. We have to continue to develop our mind. Okay. So some data on this. Up to 30% of routine tasks will be automated by 2030. We see a lot of automation happening now. I love to automate because I am calling myself now the data queen. But that's just so funny for me to say. You all know I'm very humble. So, but hey, data queen title today. So most definitely I'm a critical thing here is building a lot around automation for myself as an entrepreneur. And I love data. And I love to see what can be created from doing data analysis. And a lot is going to be automated, but I also like to be the brains behind my own developments. And that critical thinking skill has been able to keep me in that pattern. Employers rank critical thinking as a top three skill needed for the future workforce. Didn't need data to state that to you all. I talk to a lot of corporations and things because I have a lot of amazing corporate writers, but I knew that. That's why we're having this conversation today because the word just keeps popping up everywhere, every room that I'm going into, every many podcast episodes that I've been doing, just as I've been talking to people. It's just something that I live my life to every day as a critical thinker. And I'm starting to see some of those gaps myself. So that's why we're having this conversation today. Because my hope after this discussion is that we're going to clear this up. We're all going to be using those things I've mentioned at the beginning of this podcast to be able to become great critical thinkers. And we're going to be able to start identifying those gaps ourselves and enhancing our own capabilities and abilities. I know we are. So we're going to be upwards and thriving after this podcast episode because I just love my community. And I know we will do it because we are amazing people. We would be listening to Black Girls New Engineer podcast if we did not want more for ourselves or that guidance and mentoring and understanding what's going on, right? That's what we do here. So after this episode, everybody's going to be going forward and thriving. And our hope is that that data goes down and it won't be one of those top three skills. Need it. More focusing on skill sets, right? And developments outside. Just using our amazing minds that we have. We think about so much about our wants and our needs, but for STEM professionals and many other people too. But you know, I like to talk about STEM careers. This is a skill set that we're required to have in this space. As we're going through life and working in industries, we should be bringing these skills to the table. As we're college students and working to become STEM professionals, this is something we should be learning and thinking through our learnings in college so that when we go into the workforce, we are able to give more of our amazing brains to these innovations and creations. And if we are in K through 12, we're not just learning and we're able to come home and tell our parents what it is that we learned by thinking through what we learned and having an understanding to be able to communicate that. Because you are learning amazing school things in school, but you're not being able to interpret it as a problem. You're not understanding some of those science words that you have memorized as a problem. You not being able to talk about that science project, knowing that yes, it was a cool outcome at the end, but you have no clue how you got to the results. You don't want to just be like, oh yeah, me and my friends did that, or my friend did that part. Like you, you want to be able to clearly define from beginning to end of how you got to that amazing result. So you have to start young, and everyone needs these skills. Now, this is another data that I need to talk about when it comes to who's at risk. And students in under-resourced communities often have less access to hands-on, problem-based learning environments. And this is so true. I mean, you can see it, right? Especially in these communities, there's not a lot of offerings. Now, Black Girls do engineer, we thrive to offer hands-on workshops and training in under-resourced communities and provide the resources for them to be able to engage to enhance their critical thinking skills. But this is really who's severely at risk at this time because they have no access to that hands-on learning. And hands-on learnings do develop a lot of critical thinking skills and projects and things like that. And if you don't have those resources to do so, then of course you will be left behind. And that is something that we have to work to to ensure that these communities are served. I know Black Girls do engineer. We go to many communities, a lot of communities that don't have programming like ours show up in their communities at all. And we go in there with the intent to serve. And nothing more, nothing less, nothing to not too many questions. Connecting with the beautiful communities that we go within, and we provide them with the things that they would have never had the opportunity to have. And so I have been in these environments to say, yeah, more can be done. And I'm just so happy that with Black Girls Do Engineer, we are doing that. So that's who's at risk. Anyone who doesn't have the access to hands-on learning or programming, such as Black Girls Do Engineer, any problem-based learning books, right? Many great thinkers learn to think by reading. Okay. And that can be a whole nother two, three, four, five-day podcast just on reading alone, because reading enhances your critical thinking skills. That's how you understand things that you're reading to understand. Right. So reading is very important, but we'll talk about that some other time. But it's a huge part of becoming a great critical thinker. So it's important to know without critical thinking skills, students struggle to adapt. They rely on technology instead of understanding it. We talked about that, right? We're going to stop that for sure. They become users, not creators. Okay. We have to create. And I'm not talking about just our wonderful fashionableness. I'm talking about that innovation piece, the minds behind technology, the minds behind many innovations. We have to do it, right? I've talked to you all in past podcast episodes about not being users but innovators. And that still applies here. And if you don't have critical thinking skills, that it's really hard for us to do. But critical thinking skills, now this is this is what critical thinking skills do for you. Teaches you how to lead. Many of us want to be leaders. Many of us as entrepreneurs are the leaders. If you are CEO of a company, if you are the chair of a board or programming in college, if you are on your basketball team and you are the captain of it, you are in a robotics or debate club and you are the captain of it. You pretty much got there because you have critical thinking skills. You are a leader. If you aim to lead, which many of you can accomplish anything that you aim to do, critical thinking skills is going to help you get there. Because if it's a leader, you have to be able to think through any situation to guide your team. So that's one reason critical thinking skills are important. And if you have them, you have the capability, capability to lead. Solve problems. That's what STEM professionals do. If you are thinking about becoming an uh engineer, working in tech, or becoming the next doctor, great doctor, want to be a wonderful mathematician around a whether that's an accountant, whether that's a calculating calculations for space, whatever that may be for you. You have to be a problem solver and critical thinking skills help you do that. And for people who are just like me, yeah, innovator at heart. We all do. I love to innovate. Critical thinking skill helps you become the innovator. You may be sitting right now in your head, you have a billion and one amazing ideas in there, but you're like, what do I do with them? You start using these critical thinking skills, and I promise you, you will guide yourself to figure it out. That's what critical thinking skills will do for you. When it comes again, because we have so much technology at our fingertips now, and we have AI that's serving as a wonderful tool and a resource. Use it as an assistant because AI can assist, they cannot replace how you think. You need to be thinking about what AI is giving you, whether it's in an email, whether it is in whatever you ask AI through your prompting to give you. You need to read it and make sure it's correct and making sure that information is accurate as your brain would think it to be. All those things is important. So just as we get to our time, until we come together next time, understand. This is a skill that must be built intentionally. So this is over time. You may hear this podcast episode, and you may think by next week you should be an expert at it. No, it takes years. I've been working on my critical thinking skills. So I was in elementary school. Because for me, I knew college was for me. And I knew that I wanted to be something great that was going to change the world for the better. And I did a lot of time reading, yeah, everybody knows I love to read technical articles and books. I spent all the college reading books. My friends always laugh at it because they used to say, Cara, you know every part of this textbook. And I used to say, Well, yeah, we paid a lot for them. So I'm gonna read it. But I spent majority of my life building up my skills in critical thinking. So it takes time. But I want you all to just understand it starts with asking those questions and analyzing stuff and just practicing at them to enhance your critical thinking skills and you will get there, and you'll know when you get there because it feels amazing. You do hit that part of your mind where you can think through several things at a time. That's a whole nother discussion for another thing. It's important to understand that, you know, with all of this, that students in hands-on-stem programs like Black Girls Do Engineer, they show higher problem-solving ability and confidence. So if you're a parent and you are looking for ways to help your children become critical thinkers, Black Girls do Engineer is here to support you and look for other work sets in your area. Yeah, to think through these things, rather, that's just going to your internet search engine and typing in resources and programming. You have to do that to be able to help your children learn these critical thinking skills. Early exposure, as I mentioned to you, I've been working in my critical thinking skills my whole life since I was a little kid. And early exposure to applied learning increases long-term academic and career service success. I can't say that enough, not because the data shows that, but because I've seen that with my own eyes to Black Girls Doing Junior Program. Many girls who started with us very young or now in college or some professionals today. It is something that is real. So the earlier, the sooner, the better we start as young as kindergarten. You see anything that we're offering, we do advise you to start signing your amazing children up so we can help stand beside you and prepare up the future of them. Practical things you just want to do. Ask why instead of just giving the answer. I know how frustration, frustrating that can be. I know from a parent perspective, I have three amazing daughters. I asked them why. They've been working on their critical thinking skills since they were very young. So my oldest most definitely will tell you why. But my youngers are in elementary and working on these skills daily. And now I can notice from the start of the school year to now, my youngest and my middle child are most definitely able to tell me why. Or they'll come home and start just telling me about things they learned and what they did and how they did it. They think through a lot more now. But I'm like most parents, you know, had those questions and I wasn't getting any answers. And I was like, I know they're learning at school. So I started making sure I put it in my daily routine to make sure I'm asking those consistent, continuous questions to make sure I'm getting my children to think through. So those are things that I would advise any parent to do. Another thing I would say that's a step that should be taken to let, you know, your child struggle through some of those solutions. I know as parents, it's hard. We want to dive in and help them. But instead of giving them the answer, let them work through it. And this is a great opportunity to continue to ask you more questions to get their minds to think and let them work through the get they're gonna get there. They're gonna get to the answer, and you will be able to cheer when they're cheering, but teach them how to problem solve through some of that struggle. Introduce real world challenges. Now, you may be like, How do I do that? Well, we do it here often at Black Girls Do Engineers, so side number four programming and looking for those resources to introduce them or finding your own resource or activity that you want to do with your child at home. Again, technology is at our fingertips. Many things are possible. You want to encourage that building, testing, and experimenting. This is most definitely for my future chemists. They love doing this part, but there's so many other parts of our life where we can do this, whether that's cooking in the kitchen, which is a big form of chemistry with your children or your parents. You want to build off that menu. You want to test it, right? And experimenting comes from getting it and tweaking that meal. Like we talked about mac and cheese, to be the best mac and cheese and putting it out to kind of get some feedback and results. All those things matter. And that could start at home. Focus on process, not just results. Again, task completion, check in the box. We have to get out of that rhythm. We have to think through the process, think through the steps, think through if this is what we should be doing, right? Thinking through the grander result, the grander impact. Let's stop checking boxes. Let's just stop completing tasks. Let's think through these tasks. We don't close the game. Gap by giving answers, we close it by building thinkers. So we are all going to be amazing thinkers together. We're all going to enhance our critical thinking skills because, especially for STEM roles, everyday life, critical thinking is very important. So let me leave you with this. The future belongs to those who can think, adapt, and solve problems. And that starts now. So whether you are a parent, educator, or student, ask better questions, create space for problem solving, and focus on building thinkers. Because at the end of the day, it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. Thank you for listening to Black Girls Do Engineer podcast where we build confidence, community, and futures in STEM. I'll see you in the next episode. To learn more about Black Girls Do Engineering, you can check out our website at BlackgirlsdoEngineer.org or email us directly at info at black girls to engineer.org.