Age of the youngest CLA

[Andy_Mil]

Being a nerd isnt a bad thing...

Just get her a WeDo or MINDSTORMS kit. Then she will want to be a nerd!

[mallorim]

I know from personal experience if your dad catches you early, you can form a strong nerd foundation.

Don't worry though, if you pass her back over to her mom for Junior High and High School, she can be a social butterfly and keep the nerdiness on the downlow.  Just keep her in engineering and problem solving extra-curricular activities like Odyssey of the Mind and Society of Women Engineers and she should turn out alright.

We have a few high schoolers who participate in FIRST Robotics League with cRIO programming, and they are working towards CLD certification. A number of NI Interns were CLD certified this year and have returned to their campuses to form user groups and promote LabVIEW CLD certifications in undergrads who have done LabVIEW project work, but  no real CLAs I know of besides Andy M.

[DianeS]

Don't worry about the nerd thing if it doesn't show up right away...it can be latent.

I was a theater major for my first two years of college -- actor / dancer / singer.  I also waited tables to put myself through school (my college education was self-funded), starting in high school.  It didn't take too long for me to decide that waiting tables for the rest of my life was a non-starter, so I changed my major to EE.  It seemed like I'd have a reasonable shot at getting a good job without anything beyond a Bachelor's.

It worked out well.

So even if she shows no interest whatsoever in engineering until she's, say, in her 20's, she still might become one. 

Encourage athletics, too.  Exercising the body helps the mind engage.  I'm still out on the pitch every day.  I'm a much better (and happier) programmer when I come back inside!

Just a girl's perspective for ya.

[Mark_Yedinak]

I still get a kick out of my oldest daughtger. In high school she loved math and chemistry. When she was deciding what she wanted to study in college I had suggested she consider chemical engineering. She promptly said, "ew, I don't want to be an engineer like you. That is so nerdy and boring." The summer before her senior year she came to me an said "I figured out what I want to do. I read this really cool article about nanotechnology. That's what I want to do." When I told her that involves chemical engineering all of a sudden that was a decent choice. Fast forward to today and she is in her third year in college (is a senoir in standing) and will graduate next year with degrees in both chemical engineering and chemistry. Her younger sister is in her first year studying biomedical engineering. You have to love when your kids decide to become nerds.

[yenknip]

I took my CLA exam and got the result either side of my 25th Birthday

[Brandyn]

well this thread crushes my dreams of being the yougnest 😞

[Khachik91]

My colleague is 17 and he has CLA 🙂