My College Regrets

@ijohnpederson just tweeted this to me:

and I couldn’t stop myself from blogging about it immediately. This article is a must-read - “We Have the Technology to Change” by Michelle Levesque. Michelle says (referring to her new hobby of programming in high school):

“No one explained to me that my new hobby was much more common among men than women, but I probably wouldn’t have cared if they had. Growing up, I had always spent a lot more time with the boys in my class than with other girls, preferring the adventure games that the boys played to the girls’ games of house and dolls. And although the lack of diversity in technology eventually became something that bothered me greatly, it was because I felt that the lack of women in the field was a symptom of other problems. If the “boys club” atmosphere was keeping out women, it was probably keeping out a lot of other important personalities, ideas, and philosophies. It was an indication that something was wrong and unhealthy and needed to be fixed in the field. But it was never something that stopped me personally—if nothing else, because I loved rising to meet a challenge.

When I finally reached university, I had to select a major to apply for and I was met with a difficult decision. I’d always loved and done well in the humanities, but finally there was the opportunity to pursue my passion for programming in an academic setting. I decided to enroll in Computer Science, but picked up as many non-Computer Science classes as my department would allow. I found that there was an amazing overlap between them, and that the material I learned in my political science and philosophy classes were just as applicable to a software engineering career as the programming classes were.”

I found this so interesting because I had a conversation with my best friend and running partner during a run this past weekend where I was trying to describe to her my newfound fascination with playing around in WordPress and trying to teach myself (slowly) some coding. I told her that I had always wanted to take more Computer Science and Information Systems courses when in college, but I just didn’t feel like I fit in with that culture (note: I graduated with my accounting degree in 2002, so this wasn’t all that long ago!). It was so timely that John shared this article with me just now because I’m realizing that if I had “rose to meet the challenge” like Michelle did, I could have been in a very different field than I am today. Admittedly, accounting isn’t necessarily a girly field, but business majors tended to be where girls like me migrated at the time and at my university. My roommate majored in IS and I was always jealous of the projects she was working on, but just didn’t feel comfortable with the all-male crowd she was in. The single CS and IS courses I took made me feel like I do when I’m playing with new tech toys today - completely engaged and wrapped up in my work. I wish I would have acted on my urges to change majors back then.  Call me girly, call me weak, but I was what I was - no going back on that.

I think the thing that would have made me more likely to go against my feelings of not fitting in would have been more introduction to *hard* technology in high school, before I made my decision about my major. The only technology I was exposed to in high school (graduated in 1999) was in business-related computer courses - Word Processing, Accounting, Shorthand, and such. These courses were the reason I chose my business major, and while they interested me, they were never a passion like exploring new tech is now.

Just something to think about as I teach the young women in my classrooms and raise my daughter…………oh wait……….isn’t this something we need to address with BOTH genders? Hmmmmmmm…………………will ponder.

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