I recently spent the day at Northern New Mexico College, surrounded by middle school girls, cardboard, tape, and a whole lot of imagination.

I was invited by the New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering to lead workshops as part of their “Exploring the Possibilities” STEM event. They organize these experiences across the state, and you can feel the impact immediately. The room was full of curiosity before we even started.

We began with a time jump. It’s 2046. You’re 20 years older. The world didn’t stand still. Some things got better, some got messier.

I asked them to write quickly, no overthinking, about one thing they would fix, solve, or change before then. That shift, from now to later, changed the energy in the room. Suddenly, they weren’t just students. They were decision-makers.

From there, we moved into sketches and then into building. Cardboard bases, tape and glue everywhere, beads, and scraps. It got messy fast, in the best possible way. They built what we called future artifact portals, physical objects from 2046 that solve a problem they care about.

Not ideas floating around, but something you could hold, point to, and explain.

As they worked, the thinking started to surface. Who uses this? When? What does it change? What might it break? Without calling it anything formal, they were working through systems, cause and effect, and the reality that every object carries choices inside it.

What I love about this kind of work is how quickly it becomes real for them. The future stops feeling distant. It becomes something you can shape. You can see it happen in their hands, in the way they test, adjust, and explain their builds to each other.

It was collaborative and full of energy. The kind of learning that doesn’t sit still. I got to walk them through what being a futurist looks like in practice: not guessing, but making. Prototypes, sketches, artifacts. Evidence of ideas. It was so fun. There’s something powerful about stepping away from screens and building in the physical world. You can watch thinking happen in real time. You can see confidence grow as something takes shape.

I’m grateful to the New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering for the invitation and for the work they’re doing across New Mexico. Experiences like this matter.