The Path Less Travelled?

As of last January, I joined a research group under one of my profs, studying engineering education, focusing specifically on project-based learning and gender. I absolutely love it.

Now, I've always been really interested in girls and the sciences. My mum was a Physics major who was told to major in Home Ec and now owns her own computer network consulting business that she built from the ground up. I've been involved with Girl Scouts, the Anita Borg Foundation/Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer, and Sally Ride Science Camps, working to get/keep girls interested in sciences, and am a member of my school's SWE chapter. Gender and engineering is something right up my alley, one would think.

As I said before, I absolutely love my research. It's utterly fascinating and makes me think hard about the world that I am surrounded myself in.

But sometimes I wonder... is it making me think too hard?

Now, up until senior year of high school, I'd never had a male science teacher, and my streak was only broken by my two computer science teachers. I've always been surrounded by strong, female scientists who have always encouraged me and, god dammit, I'm good at science. Yet, I too fall prey to the insecurities that is common for women in the sciences. Am I smart enough for this? Do I really want to be studying that? Why can't I speak up, even if I know the answer?

The worst part, I think, and what is still bothering me, is the guilt. I'm going into bioengineering, hoping to do immunology or genetics or drug development or biotechnology or something like that. I'm even pre-med, hoping to get my M.D./Ph.D., so I can study the human body and the human immune system and do research. Every time I mention that that's what I want to do, I general get some variation of "Wow, that's ambitious. You're going to be in school forever, you know?" (which, thank you, I do know). Pursuing a double degree like that supposed to be really, really hard.

So why do I feel as if I'm wimping out and taking the easy path?

Bioengineering is one of the most women-heavy engineering fields.

Both of my parents highly encouraged (read: groomed) me to go into computer science and electrical engineering. I was sent to computer camp at the age of 8. If I wanted to, I could definitely be a computer scientist and/or electrical engineering. Yet, I run in the opposite direction, purposefully not thinking about computers, unless I absolutely have to.

My mum got her master's in Medical Science, but managed to do so without taking a pure Biology course, ever. She is very disdainful of Biology, and thinks it's an easy option.

Sadly, that is a relatively common opinion amongst my peers, despite the fact that Bioengineering is growing in popularity, as a major. We don't really need as many math or design courses as the other engineers, and are generally thought of as not really engineering or the wimps.

For my research, I read all these papers about how there aren't many girls in Computer Science or Physics, and how percentages are dropping every year. My mother would be thrilled if I went into either of these fields, and I do have the aptitude towards them, if I put my mind to it. I don't have an aversion into going into either field, and I feel as if it's my duty, as a well trained, intelligent, and confident female, to go into these fields and increase the number of girls in CS, through my own participation and/or encouragement of others.

I love Biology, and it can make me really, really happy. Yet I feel as if I'm betraying my training by going into something that isn't difficult, that I don't have to fight for acceptance. If I can withstand the pressure that society and these fields make females entering them undergo, am I wasting resources by going down an easier path?

-J

Yes, I'm A Nerd: A Biology Love-Note

So I'm sitting in my bio lab right now, waiting for the spectrophotometer we are using to cool down to the right temperature and I'm just reminded of how much I love biology. Yes, my lab work has been giving me a headache lately, but this is the first time I've actually done anything in a biology lab since, oh, this time last year. A year without biology is a year of sadness for me. : D

-J

It's That Time of the Year Again

February 9th.

5 days until Valentine's Day.

Hoo boy.

Best of luck to all of you out there pursuing love!

<3
-J

Yuletide Thoughts

As I am serving as the baking slave for my mother for our big Christmas day familial get together (and with the size of my family, believe me when I say she needs all the help she can get), several thoughts have popped into my mind.

- I'd forgotten how much of a bitch marzipan mushrooms are to make
- I prefer old fashioned Christmas carols over this modern stuff (except for Trans Siberian Orchestra)
- Stay at home mums deserve more credit
- Dishwashers are love, especially after being without one for five months
- California would freak out if we got a white Christmas; still, it would be really cool
- Baking + computers = not the best combination (sorry baby!)
- Big cooking extravaganzas haven't really started until I've gotten at least one burn (got it! And my mother completely agrees with me on this)

Wishing for rest more than anything at the moment,
-J

Favourite Poem Project

Robert Pinsky's Favourite Poem Project is really a quite remarkable one. We've listened to a few examples in class, and I've enjoyed every single one of them. The most recent one that I have heard is about Shakespeare's Sonnet 29, from the point of view of a retired anthropologist from Boston.

I chose the Shakespearean sonnet for several reasons. I love sonnets, and have a poster in my room back home of all of Shakespeare's sonnets. While I was not personally familiar with #29, I knew what Shakespeare's sonnets were like, and therefore felt that I could at least understand the poem (if not know it ahead of time), and instead focus on what the man was saying about how the poem made him feel.

It was really impressive, I thought. He managed to memorize the entire poem, and from the stories that he told from his youth, had memorized quite a few other poems, like it was nothing. Now, I've heard of people memorizing poetry for an elementary-school assignment, but rarely do people remember that poem into their 80s, like this man. Is it a lost art? Why don't people memorize poems anymore? Do they still do, and I just am uninformed?

Now I want to go memorize a poem.
-J
-J

Hello? Who's That?

Write about nicknames you have been called throughout your life. Who called you what? How did the names make you feel, and why? If you never had a nickname, did you ever want one? Do you have nicknames for yourself in your interior speech? What is in a name? [Note: This is a surprisingly apt writing prompt, for I spent the majority of my Thanksgiving break trying to create a nickname for myself that my little sister could call me.]

Nicknames are strange and peculiar things. I'm quite fond of my full name, though it itself takes several different forms. I have my full legal name, which most people know me by, but I also have my Russian name, under which I was baptized and what my father will call me when he introduces me to people in Russian. From both of these names, a wide variety of nicknames have sprung.

At the beginning of fourth grade, a friend of mine decided that calling me 'Jennifer' was far too long, and that he was going to call me 'Jenny.' From there, the name stuck (thanks in part to his determination in convincing my teachers to call me that), and I was 'Jenny' throughout middle school and high school. My older friends would often be slightly confused when talking to my high school friends, the references to 'Jennifer' and 'Jenny' befuddling both parties. I, for one, did not really care (once I got past my initial objections), and would, depending on who was around, refer to myself or introduce myself as both 'Jennifer' and 'Jenny.' My friends would of course alter what they call me, giving me nicknames such as 'Jenny-bean' and other bizarre variations of my name. The interesting thing is, once I got to university, the name 'Jenn' was given to me. A few of my friends would call me 'Jenn' in short, but it never really stuck with anyone besides my older brother. Yet, I arrive at university and everyone begins to call me 'Jenn.' I really don't remember how this began, or who started it, but I find this highly amusing.

One of my favourite nicknames is the one that my brother's fiancee gave me. She calls me 'Sisterfer,' a combination of 'Jennifer' and 'sister.' Then again, she's also the Nicknaming Queen.

My mother has a wide variety of nicknames for me, the majority of them given to me when I was a little girl and often to annoy her own mother. She is the only person that will call me these names, and they are the only ones that are not some derivative of 'Jennifer' or 'Yevgenia.'

I am one of those people who will create online names for myself that are similar to my actual name - indeed, this own title is a conglomeration of my full name, Jenn S., A.

The amusing thing is, I respond to both of my sisters' names, and along with the names of several of my close friends. I also get 'Jessica' quite a bit as well, for some reason.

I'm really bad at assigning nicknames to myself or other people. I have a tendence to call people by generic nicknames such as "babe," but whenever people ask what to call me, I'm never quite sure what to answer.

-J

The Workshop and How to Continue

I would just like to start off by saying that reading twelve iterations of the same comments on my story makes me very sick of my own writing. Blech.

Writing my short story was very, very hard for me, mostly because it didn't want to stay short. I had all of these ideas that I knew I couldn't properly expand on, given the time and page limit, yet I went ahead anyway. Ahem.

The reaction from my classmates to my story was very, er, strong. All in all, people were wrapped up in the confusion of not knowing what exactly the world was about. Hmm.

Maybe it's just because my writing is influenced by authors such as Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman (both of whom this story was compared to. I couldn't have been happier when I heard that), but I'm used to not knowing what is going on in the world the characters are living in. I have no problems with knowing just enough to get by, and focusing instead on the story and the actors in it.

Apparently most people would like to know exactly what is going on.

Which brings me to my next problem. I know that I need to expand on my story, and I have several scenes formulating in my head, but what is really stopping me from continuing onwards is the fact that I don't know how much people want to know. I could give the readers pages and pages and pages of background on each of my characters, and while I personally would find that fascinating (even if I hadn't come up with it myself), I don't know if other, non-geeks would also like this, or would just get bored three paragraphs in.

And then I have to wonder... Who will be reading this? Should I subject them to my long and drawn out descriptions and screw their boredom? Also, how exactly am I going to accomplish this without seeming like an immature writer (which is often why I shy away from long, drawn out descriptions)?

Being re-bitten by the writing bug,
-J