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Allyson Lawless took up the reins or SAIEs presidential uce an 1 January 2000. Allyson makes her mark on history as SAICIE's first lady president and first president In the now millennium. She talked to Philip Clarke about her background, her business, and her thoughts an chill engineering In South Africa
Young and restless
I was very strong in maths and science - I used to drive my science teacher crazy by pointing out why this or that scientist didn't get this or that experiment to work. I would even suggest why the theory might be wrong.
As a result, early in my high-school career she said to my mother: 'This child has to do a PhD in chemistry, nothing less. If you can't afford it, you have to work out how she can get a scholarship.' My father was a plumber, you see, and he was hardly a high earner those were the days when plumbers made less than engineers!
So my science teacher planted in my brain that I should be some oddball scientist, but when I went for the normal vocational testing, I simply couldn't take those questions seriously - 'Would you rather sell peas, shell peas, or grow peas?' What a ridiculous question to ask a fifteen-year-old! As a result, I was completely inconsistent in my answers and it was impossible for anyone to advise me.
The filing cabinet, the bridge, and the man in the hard hat
It was simple for a girl in those days. If you were strong in a subject, you became a teacher; if you were academically weak, you went into nursing. That made it very easy to make up your mind, but I wasn't prepared to accept either of those. After another abortive test at the Education Department in Maritzburg, the counsellor emptied the entire contents of his filing cabinet into my mother's Morris Oxford and told me to spend the weekend going through it all until I found something I liked. Well, I started with A, and when I got to C, there was a beautiful brochure showing a man wearing a hard hat, staring up so affectionately at a bridge that he had built, and he was so proud!
I didn't read...