With time flying, I can't believe the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is next week! I am so excited! Now that I'm an upper level undergraduate student, I always wanted to go to at least one conference and I'll be satisfying that personal goal next week! In celebration of the conference, let me talk more aout my experience as a Computer Science at UBC.
On one of my first ever visits at UBC as an official UBC student, someone asked me what was my major and I answered that I was in Computer Science. Her response was "Woah! Crazy science!". That type of response actually followed me throughout the rest of my undergraduate and continues to do so. More often, this type of response is only directed to women in Computer Science. The responses I get are usually people telling me this degree is too hard or it's not meant for women. I never understood that. If the degree is to hard, it would mean there would be very few people in that degree or students would consistently fail. I didn't see either of that. And of course, most people don't even know what this field is about.
I remember being in CPSC 111 and it was really my first exposure to Computer Science. I don't think I was ever intimidated by other students that were more knowledgable in CS or the lack of women in the course. Actually, I think there were actually at least 30% women in that course so it wasn't very obvious that I was a minority. The things that I did notice was that there were some very passionate CS students that knew a lot since they have been programming for a while and I don't think I often see this in other majors. Second, the department of CS is actually very supportive of their students and very willing to help students to make sure they succeed. However, there were always one or two students that knew a lot and would like to ask a lot of irrelevant questions in class to show off their knowledge.
I sometimes feel that women complaining that they're intimidated by other male students can be exaggerated. While there are more male students that are very passionate in CS, there are also many male students that are the typical students that don't do anything outside of school and are 'just getting their degree'. I've also seen quite a few female students that do a lot of work outside of school and in the department. I sometimes feel this intimidation is due to a lack of confidence of not believing that they know the material well. I used to be similar to that but I was curious to learn and I wasn't afraid of being wronged. If I was wrong, it means I get an opportunity to learn more, how great! I also believed that if I was able to show who I am or what I'm capable of, no one can possibly deny me an opportunity due to the fact that I'm a female. This in turn only led me to believe to work harder.
Another reason I could think of why women are intimidated is because women are conditioned in our culture to take a back sit or certain ways. For example, when I was a kid, I was told to play toys in a more polite, non-aggressive, feminine way because I was crashing my toy cars into each other quite hard. Also, I was told that women should not be playing sports because it's too unfeminine and are for boys. These are some scenarios that I saw women being discouraged from certain activities and I'm not surprised to see women less likely to speak up in situations because women were raised (depending on culture) to be polite and 'feminine' (whatever that means).
Anyway, this is really just my two cents. I'm quite curious to hear more at Grace Hopper Conference!
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