Assumptions

note: this essay is way over the word limit so I would appreciate comments on what I can take out :)

In our society, people make assumptions about others based on their appearance every day. Because I’m a girl, many people assume that I am not smart enough to be successful in engineering. I have wanted to be an engineer since grade school, and if I hadn’t been raised in such a nurturing environment, I’m not sure that I would still be confident enough to do it. I can’t pick only one time that people have expressed doubts about my ability to pursue engineering, so I am going to talk about a few of the times that I still think about to this day.

The first time I remember experiencing someone thinking I wasn’t good enough because of my gender was when I was still in grade school and I joined an all-girls First Lego League team. We worked hard during the months leading up to the competition and ended up winning the Judge’s Choice award and qualifying for state. Even though we were clearly qualified and had earned that award, we still received offhand remarks from boys on other teams about how we couldn’t be good because we were an all-girls team. They would say things about how we only got that award because we were girls and that our coach must have made most of our robot for us. At the time, I didn’t really process why they would think this, but looking back, it is shocking that even those young boys thought that we weren’t capable of being girls who were also good at engineering.

During my sophomore year, something similar happened when I went to a meeting for a local robotics team to see if I would be interested in joining. I walked into a room full of boys, which was intimidating by itself and told one of the leaders (an older boy from my school) that I was interested in joining the team. The first thing he told me was that I would probably be great as a social and outreach coordinator. When he said this, I was confused because I wanted to join the team to be able to work on building and programming the robot, but I quickly realized that he assumed I would only be good for outreach because I am a girl. I was honestly shocked that he would think that, let alone say it out loud and I wish I had said something at the moment but I didn’t. I went to a few meetings but ended up not joining the team because of the time commitment. I was also one of only three girls at the time on a team of about 25 boys and I didn’t feel very comfortable at meetings. Today, the team now has a lot more girls, including some female leaders, which is a good change.

I think that this issue is also very pertinent at Uni as I can think of countless examples where girls have been put down in STEM classes. The first instance I can think of is when my friend and I decided to join the student IT Support team my subfreshman year, where we were two of four girls in a group of twenty boys. I didn’t mind being a minority because I know how to speak up for myself, but it makes me wonder how many more girls would feel comfortable pursuing these subjects if they weren’t a minority, especially at Uni which is supposed to be a safe academic environment.

Just last week, I was talking to a friend who was telling me about their class discussion in history. It came up in discussion that our country needs engineers now more than ever, because a lot of bridges that were built during an industrial boom are starting to need maintenance. Then, a girl in the class mentioned that it is especially important that we get more engineers that are women and people of color because these are entire groups of people not being adequately represented in the engineering field. The teacher’s response to this comment honestly really surprised me, especially because I have known this teacher my entire time at Uni. He said (I don’t have an exact quotation) that he agrees there should be more female engineers because we should have equal opportunity, but the reason we don’t is because men’s brains are naturally better at science, while women are better in nurturing fields. According to my friend, this was the last thing said before the bell rang, and everyone left class in shock from his comment. Even though I wasn’t even in that class, I am so surprised that someone even thinks like that, let alone a teacher at Uni. It is sad that he couldn’t even see that he said something wrong, and I think that this is representative of how a lot of boys and teachers at Uni still think.

The third example that comes to my mind when thinking of this issue at Uni is Girls Who Code. Most people have already heard about all the details of what happened, but the fact that it took that long for people to understand the issue was a big problem. Girls Who Code is trying to change the inequality in STEM spaces at Uni, and the negative response we got to the club this year was really shocking.

When I am talking to people that I don’t know very well and they ask me what I want to do, I reply, “biomedical engineering,” and they almost always act very surprised and say something like “wow, good luck!” or “that’s really hard.” Honestly, this reaction is never very encouraging and I think that a boy saying the same thing would get a very different response from a lot of people. I think that this is complicated by the way that I dress. The fact that I like to wear things that are in style and considered cool or trendy makes me appear even more “girly” which in some people’s minds means that I can’t also be smart. Girls who care about their appearance are automatically considered superficial, and I often feel like people judge me for what I wear, especially if I am in an academic setting.

All girls interested in STEM experience being put down in situations similar to what I have experienced, and that is something that needs to change. If I hadn’t been raised in an environment where I had encouragement to follow my dreams, I might not be pursuing engineering because I wouldn’t have believed that I could do it. These situations have made me stronger because I have had to really think about if this is what I want to do, especially knowing that I will be up against people who don’t think I belong for the rest of my life.