Being an engineering student is pretty difficult. It’s like sailing through a hurricane full of labs, assignments, exams, note-taking, arcane concepts, and cryptic Greek letters. Something or other has to give: generally that means skipping almost every tutorial and talking with, at most, a small clique who shares every class section with you.
Classes move fairly quickly, and trigonometric identities won’t explain themselves. I have to learn every concept correctly the first time, which means if there is even the slightest ambiguity my arm shoots towards the ceiling. Sometimes I ask a pertinent question, sometimes I don’t, and on one recent occasion I simply asked “But…??” to the amusement of the rest of the class. Not everyone shares my attitude. Most students never get a word in edgewise. There’s this one genius who manages to answer at least half the questions the profs toss to the class, and never seems to misunderstand anything. Among the tiny pool of remaining class conversationalists, there are almost no women.
This is one of the few occasions I actually notice gender balance in class. I sit near the front and only look back for a few seconds per lecture. In 2015 I attended psychology lectures, ECE lectures, reduced-load chem lectures, and the chemical engineering section of a circuits class. I got the vague impression that some classes had different gender balances than others but it was never something that bothered or excited me. I suppose I’d notice if a lecture had less than ten women or more than a hundred. I’d notice, but I cannot see myself changing my behaviour at all. The only things that matter are being able to understand what’s going on, and having something to say.
I suppose, in theory, I could end up among a group of women who discuss things I know nothing about. But this already happens to me in most large groups of any gender composition.
Things are different in smaller, goal-oriented groups. There was a group project last term, where my group had two women, and two men (including me). Nobody spoke or contributed significantly less than anyone else. However, in the weekly group tutorials I have this term, the one woman in my group is quieter than any of the three men. In both groups I spoke pretty freely: everyone was pretty work-focused.
I have only ever had male lab partners, and pretty much everyone I talk to outside of class is male. Most of my female friends from past terms are off-stream. What does it matter though? As far as I know I treat them pretty similarly.
When I meet someone for the first time they don’t ask me about anything more personal than my Jobmine. I tend to reciprocate: I don’t have a very proactive social strategy. I don’t have a social strategy at all. When I talk, I talk to whomever is nearby. Maybe if we meet again, we’ll talk again. When I hear the word “networking” I think of routers, and when I hear the word “dating” I think of how much that would wreck an already precarious work-life balance.
As far as I know, I cause all my own problems. Any issue I’ve faced in university would’ve turned out better if not for my own ineptitude. I am my only significant obstacle, my own worst nemesis.
Are these effects being human? Being male? Being “brown”? Being an engineer? Being a reduced loader? Being me?
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