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