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

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

Les Petites Histories

I've been surrounded by short stories recently. Fortunately for me, that is not a problem.

The first in my slew of short stories is Neil Gaiman's collect, Fragile Things. Gaiman is one of my favourite authors, who has posted several of his short stories online (I highly recommend 'A Study in Emerald'). My copy of his work is actually a book on CD, read aloud by Neil himself. *sighs* It is absolutely beautiful. I am normally not a huge audio book fan (being easily distracted visually and therefore prone to not completely listening to what is playing), but for Neil, I will make an exception. I heard him read 'Other People' aloud when he had a book signing near my house a few years back, and I was completely blown away. The way he reads, the inflections that he knows to add, make the stories live and wrap themselves around you. Gaiman already has a very distictive writing style (though he is one of the most versitile writers I know), and his rendition of his works make it all the better. The one problem with completely immerging myself in Neil Gaiman? I start writing my manuscript and he comes out of my pen, not me. Oops.

The second in my short story adventure is Sword and Sorceress, Vol. XIII, an anthology edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. S&S anthologies have reached up into the 20s and are a collection of fantasy short stories collected and edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley (continued after her death by Diana L. Paxson and Elisabeth Walters) that all feature strong female characters in roles generally not assigned to women. The stories can be hit or miss (for the tradition epic-adventure-fantasy-story can really bore me after a few paragraphs, and those will occur), and MZB and I differ in our opinion on what makes a good story, but I still really like them. Because the first book was published in 1984, and have been published almost yearly since them, many of them are only available in used book stores. Now, I'm trying to collect them all, and I currently have 11 of the 22 (*celebration for having reached the half-way point*), only just purchasing #11 (er, technically Vol. 13, since I'm not collecting them in order) yesterday. It probably would be possible to find them online, but I enjoy searching used book stores and finding them there (and hey, it's got me half way through, so I think I'm doing pretty well). Despite the stories being published by different authors, they all are rather similar (in fact, MZB will remark on how each year her anthology will have an unofficial theme to it), exhibiting a common writing style generally found only in fantasy.

The final short story is my own. I have an idea in my head about what I want my story to look like, and how my characters (well, at least the main character, Violet) will act. I have to be careful, though, about when I write. If I write too soon after reading any short story, that author's writing style will bleed through my own writing, leading it off in a different direction from the one I originally intended. I've had to scrap entire paragraphs because I will look at them and go, "Nope, that's not me. Can't have someone else writing my story." However, reading these other short stories gives me inspiration. When I write short stories, I make them short. That is, we're talking several pages, max. Not 15 pages minimum, like this one needs to be. Reading Gaiman's and other author's longer short stories, though, where they still pull off a story in a reasonable length of time without making it seem to be only a snippet of a novel, has really encouraged me and made me feel as if I will be able to make my own work. : D

Now, back to the books for me.
-J

Review: The Left Hand of Darkness: Introduction

Second semester senior year, I studied The Left Hand of Darkness (LHoD) by Ursula K. Le Guin in my English class (Huzzah for being able to study Science Fiction!). I highly enjoyed the book, though I do have several things I objected to/want to muse on some more. However, tonight, I shall not focus on the actual book, but on something I enjoyed even more - the introduction.

I have this (bad) habit of reading ahead in books that I study in my classes, and of course, LHoD was no exception. To try and thwart this habit at the beginning of the semester (because having people throw things at you when you accidently spill something that the remainder of the class hasn't gotten to yet is never fun), I attempted to appease myself by reading the introduction and be satisfied with just that, despite the fact that I rarely read introductions.

I am so very glad that I did.

Le Guin's introduction was mind-blowing. While it was centred around LHoD and SF in general, she made some very interesting statements about books, reading, and being a writer. Fortunately for me, I found all of those subjects to be quite interesting.

"In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?" (pg xiv, Ace Book 1969 edition)

Reading this, it truly struck home with me. The number of times when I've been reading something so intensely that I become involved with what I'm reading is far too high for me to count. A truly good author can make me hear their voice and the voices of their characters. ringing in my head while I am reading. Being able to completely submerge myself in a completely different world is one of the many reasons why I love to read. Le Guin phrases these feelings about reading perfectly. She is so matter-of-fact about the insanity that is reading, completely legitimizing the feeling that anyone else might be ashamed to admit or shy away from. Her sassy comments actually made me laugh out loud, though every word that she wrote was obviously chosen with a specific intent in mind. Le Guin knows how to make her point and makes them well. I highly enjoyed the way that she touched on the societal view of artists. While her question may have been phrased in a very cavalier way, it lingers with you, as many rhetorical questions do. How many societies do honour their artists? Not ours, given the number of "drop-out-of-school-and-be-a-starving-artist" jokes I've heard. Hmm. It's also interesting to see how disparaging she appears to be to artists, being one herself.

"The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words." (pg xvi)

Wow. Just... wow. This should be every fiction writer's inspiration. Le Guin is once again hitting the nail smack down on the head. In just three sentences (or if you really need to cut it down, just one), she has managed to encapsulate an artist's (and specifically, an novelist's) entire purpose, and why what they do is so difficult, yet important. This is one of the main reasons why I've struggled with writing fiction. I will often have ideas that I want to convey in my writing, yet am unable to do so without them being far too obvious or completely ambigious. But it is also why I will write.

All in all, I really loved Le Guin's introduction.
-J