Column: Tackling hands-on projects is not one of my strong suits

I recently attended a STEM workshop for librarians. The acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The concept encompasses any kind of activity that involves young people in these fields. We were gleaning ideas that we could bring back to our own libraries.

To start, we were going to make a simple circuit using a coin cell battery and copper tape, to power an LED light. I have no natural abilities in STEM. My high school grades in math and science were, for the most part, dismal. When I took the SAT, my verbal and math scores were exactly 100 points apart.

I tried not to let my memories distract me. After all, I’d been good in arithmetic in elementary school. I did well in biology in high school. And this was a simple circuit, emphasis on simple.

As I studied the diagram (the simple diagram) that I was to copy with my materials, I felt a familiar fog fill my brain. Apparently my math anxiety is not limited to algebra. Though I tried to concentrate, STEM concepts just don’t come as easily to me as words do. Moreover, my hands don’t always seem to do what my mind is telling them to.

So it wasn’t really a surprise when I constructed my circuit backwards.

This kind of thing always seems to happen when I do a hands-on project in a workshop setting. I always like the idea of “making.” I just don’t seem to do it very well.

I remember attending a conference with some of my students years back. One of the programs was about pysanka, the Ukrainian art of egg decorating. I dropped my egg. The instructor said I was “high maintenance.”

At another workshop, I failed to make proper slime. The instructions were straightforward, and even though slime making is technically chemistry, I was not afraid. It’s basically mixing borax and water in one cup, and glue and water in another, and then slowly adding some of the borax mixture to the glue. 

How could I have possibly messed this up? I concocted something that was slime-like, but an inferior product. I half suspected that one of my mixing cups had gotten switched with a fellow participant’s, but, let’s face it, my track record is not the greatest with such activities. 

I am puzzled by my performance in such creative settings. I can cook. I can knit and crochet, albeit on basic projects like hats and scarves.

I treasure a crewel embroidery project I did as a teen. I remember buying the kit in the grocery store. It consisted of a sheet of muslin, on which had been printed an array of flowers, and the needle and yarn needed to complete the work. I did a nice job with it, and my mother sewed it onto the cover of an old throw pillow.

For years I took the pillow out each summer and put it on one of the rocking chairs on our porch. But last summer it started to unravel. The fabric was growing thin. I can’t bear to throw it out, so it remains in storage for now.

I later tackled a large embroidery project and—probably with the help of my mother—managed to frame it. I gave it to her sister, my Aunt Stella, and it hung on her wall until she had to go into a nursing home at age 95.

But then I remember the skirt with the crooked hem that I made in my home economics class in middle school.

That made me sad, because my mother was an excellent seamstress. When my sister and I were young, she made a lot of our clothes. She sewed a pair of café curtains and matching valance for my kitchen 30 years ago. I just cut them into rags last month.

I do wish I had inherited her skills. But I suspect that my lack of math smarts and limited handiwork capabilities are connected. The reason I think so is because I always had the urge to take up quilting. The thriftiness of using up old fabric appealed to me, but I also like the concept of making things. Like I said, it’s the reality that flummoxes me.

Anyway, I bought a book that had templates for a few different designs. I gathered material, and chose my pattern. I cut out a stack of shapes. Then I realized, with a feeling of horror, that it was geometry in action. The shapes had to fit together. In a pattern. I may have broken into a cold sweat.

Clearly, I lack spatial ability. Wikipedia defines that as “the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations among objects or space.” I took a look at a spatial abilities test online and I didn’t even have to try to answer the questions to know I would flunk it.

So I’ve decided that the next time I’m tempted to do any kind of hands-on activity in a group, I need to remind myself that I probably will embarrass myself at some point during the program. I will base my decision on how self-confident I’m feeling on that particular day.

Meanwhile, I will remind myself that I can string words together and tell stories, and I know how to find books quickly in any library using the Dewey Decimal System. Surely that has to count for something in this life.