Girl + Computer = ?

This year, I have noticed several other CS major girls in my classes. This is extremely exciting, although I’m starting to feel settled among my guy CS buddies and my friends of all genders outside of classes - more on that later.

The number of CS girls I’ve seen around has quadrupled! Although I’m not on a first-name basis with one of them, its exciting seeing a little more balance among genders in my classes and finding other girls just as intrigued in programming as I am.

However, I overheard one of these girls talking with someone else after one of our shared classes ended. I hardly caught the whole discussion, but one thing stood out among the rest of the after-class chatter:

“I don’t even like programming.” 

How is it that people get into majors that they don’t enjoy, and then into career paths not meant for them? How might this girl have found herself as a CS major deep into her academic career and was unhappy with it?

Who knows, maybe she was just referencing how dull programming seems now, after a couple years of hard coding assignments. Maybe she was talking about she didn’t like web programming specifically.
I don’t know anything about her or her life, but I know that getting this far in a CS major takes either a lot of love or a lot of raw determination.
Having to go through a program this hard without loving it must be soul-crushing. Heck, I really enjoy the content of my classes but I even find my stress and unhappiness to be overwhelming sometimes! Imagine how much more that would be for someone who dislike the content, no matter what it is!

Again, I didn’t hear much else of the discussion, but I thought I heard her mention something about her parents working in engineering fields, implying that it was expected of her to follow in their footsteps.

If I’ve learned nothing from life and the people I love and admire, its that you can never let another person make a choice for you. It will never be worth it, and it will not be right for you as it was not what you would have done yourself.
Of course, everyone struggles in the balance between serving oneself and being agreeable. In fact, those close to me might know just how rich this comment is coming from me, a person who would much rather sacrifice her own comfort to avoid conflict with someone else.

Still, this is one of life’s major lessons, and upon learning it you will be set free from your own chains and start living your life as you please.

So, Allison, even though you joked about how you should switch to be a Hotel/Restaurant Management major, and I was much happier making the reverse change from HRM to CS, I hope the cosmos tells you this message from me - that following your heart is much more meaningful than following the whims and preferences of others.

unchartedreality:

if I once again hear them saying “fuck”, “dick”, “penis”, “blow job”, “pussy” or any of those varieties. I’m trapped in a class wherein I’m the only girl and the guys are being extra crude around me. WTH. If they make any more suggestive comments, I’m killing them.

Sucks to be the only girl. They’re freaking bullying me. -____-

Its stuff like this that really hurts to hear.
My usual reaction to this kind of behavior in my classes is to ironically play right along in hopes that my underlying dislike for the rude, isolating language will shine through. There’s usually a lot of me calling other girls “babes.”
I still feel really lucky that my friends in my CS classes are usually rather polite around me, but I know that this is probably not the norm. The worst I get are jokes about me listening to Katy Perry without any basis in truth and some awkward comments about how they won’t show me the girl on their desktop wallpaper.

Keep on workin’ through it, sister!!

I’ve official enrolled in the fall semester, which will be the first semester of what could have been my senior year, but is technically my junior year now that I’ve dedicated my heart to the time-suck that is studying engineering.

My subjects will be automata theory, software developing, ethics in CS, web programming, and linear algegra. To be honest, I’m only sure of the content of maybe half of my courses. I’m only familiar with the content that I am because I wikipedia’d all of it.
There’s no way this fall will NOT be a tough semester, but hopefully it will also be a good one.

I keep hoping that the more upper-division courses I enroll in, the more likely it is that I’ll meet a girl to befriend. I’m sure that this blog is starting to sound like a whole lot of me wanting gal pals, but I really do wish to find a person of my gender who shares my same love of programming. Hopefully I can find someone more similar to me this next year.

While preparing for enrollment, I kept thinking about what my life would be like if I had remained a Hotel & Restaurant major like I had initially started as when I began college. I’d be preparing to graduate next year, probably planning for an internship this summer, but I wouldn’t have experienced as much to make me question gender and what girls are allowed to like.
Would I have learned other things about these subjects? Would I have found another passion? I probably wouldn’t have had as harsh an experience in being the lone girl in my field. Would I have figured that lesson out another way?
One thing’s for sure - I wouldn’t have met Colton, and I probably wouldn’t have let myself appreciate my logical side as much.

Still, I do sometimes feel huge senses of doubt in myself. Taking so many CS classes just feels like I’ll be doomed to fail. Some small part of me keeps waiting for me to discover that somehow I’m AWFUL at computer science and that I was foolish to even try it. I know in my heart of hearts that this is the place for me and that I can do just as good as any of those dudes, but every semester I am still unable to feel fully confident in my abilities as a programmer.
I bet I won’t trust in myself as a CS person even when they hand me my diploma.

At least that is something that is commonly shared between all my friends in CS - we all experience just a precarious sense of confidence, the sensation that each of us is teetering over failure.
Depressing, yes, but quite unifying. 

Guess who won the tee-shirt design contest?!!???
Yes, my design for our chapter of SWE was the final winner for the tee-shirt contest. I am so stoked that my design work is good enough to print on dozens of shirts to be sold! This is a huge achievement for me!

Apparently, though the design was deemed too ‘feminine’ and there will be a second design to be made to be sold to the guys. I kindof found that a little surprising, as I don’t think my design was so girly. What was so girly about it? There’s a single heart on it?? Are guys not allowed to wear hearts or something?
Rant aside, if they decide to do a two-genders thing I’m hoping I might be able to sneak my way in and modify my current design for the guy’s shirt. 
Either way, I’ll definitely buy one, or maybe several.

One interesting thing about today’s meeting was the gender distribution. There were only about six girls minus the leadership, but there were four guys.
FOUR WHOLE GUYS.
At the last meeting there was probably about 12 girls and two guys.
When I first saw all of them, I was a little surprised. They sat farther away from the girls, and they seemed like they felt out of place. They didn’t really seem interested in contributing much. Two of them, who must have been friends, whispered to each other for most of the meeting.
At the end, I realized some professor offered extra credit for going to the meeting. Probably won’t seem them again. 

There’s going to be a university-wide Spring Fling carnival event that I’m going to help table at, which should be fun for several reasons!
Hopefully, I’ll feel a sense of community in helping promote this organization, and I also think I’ll enjoy the opportunity to bond with some of the other girls who’ll be helping. I feel like this kind of thing is just what I need to own this experience in SWE. I’m really excited to get involved in this club. 
Stepping up and participating in every event possible makes me really excited for my future in this organization.  

On Tuesday I was working with a group of about 7 CS guys in my class on one of our weekly programming projects.

Here are the things I observed this time:

1. About a third of all the guys present had pictures of girls as their laptop wallpapers. One of them wouldn’t even show me his. Hmm. Awkward.
2. No, Alex Koch, just because someone has a Katy Perry song stuck in their head doesn’t make them a girl. Everyone is allowed to feel like they’re living in a teenage dream, seriously.
   
   
3. Getting lost in the library is a lot more embarrassing when you have to admit it to a group of guys rather than a group of girls. But why is that? For what reason? Its not like guys are required to have a sense of direction or anything, so me admitting that I lack one doesn’t necessarily make me some weak little ingénue.
4. Me setting up my MASM assembly editor to have pink text means I have cooties. Truly? I can program just as hard as you with a pink text editor.