flee, flee from the c

[twincityhacker]

I have escaped one of the most awkard converstions that I might ever have. I was at a Women in Computing lucheon, and the topic was a study that someone did on mentoring. As the token undergrad of the hour, I got asked the question of whether I have a faculty mentor. I answered no, as I don't have one and have a tendecy not to ask people in RL questions about... anything.

Anway, the discussion ends and we all leave, and who walks in but on of my professors? I just hope that he didn't recognize me and no one remembers that I said I was talking the class he was teaching.

Besides the exit, the forum was good. Depressing, but good. Two professor's conducted a five university study about mentorship, and it turns out that the professors think they do a lot more mentorship than the undergrad or master degree students think that they're getting. On the order of 80% of professors think they make good mentors, and 20% of the students do.

The things that I found interesting was the way that respondents in the survey that they conducted got into the computer and applied computer sciences. The male students said that they got into the area in a younger age than the female respondents, and that the majority of the time the think that got females intrested in the area was a class, and the males it was self-study or in a group with friends.

Another thing that was mentioned that was a peer question on the survey, on whether or not the respondent was satisfied with their program had a great deal to do with their close friends in the unit. Someone posed a question on whether or not it made a deal with whether or not it made a difference with the gender mix, but it could not be answered with the data.

I think this should be followed up more, as I think it makes a large deal for female students in the area because most of the time you don't see a female student sitting in an area completely surrounded by males if possible. Instead, there's usually a few clusters of female students - and these clusters are more likely to be found near the front than the back. Of course, this is subjective to my expeince in all three of my classes, but it would be interseting to see how hat would work out.

Oh, and I've been up since five AM, trying to catch up on work. Some of it I've caught up on, but my programing, not so much.

Comments

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

I have only two comments.

First, I had plenty of CS profs I thought I had friendly relations with, including one who shook my hand and thanked me for taking his class as I walked out of the final. None that I would've considered a mentor, though.

And there was a big trade show thing, with the Scourge that Comes from Redmond, among others, and a bunch of undergrads I knew went there to talk and hand out resumes and such. Anyway, a EE friend was introduced to one of the people I studied with in CS. "Hi, I'm Jackie and I'm in CS". "So, you're the one," my EE friend said, meaning "the single female CS undergrad." (Come to think of it, I knew five. Grand total.) So I don't have any data to contribute to the "how do CS women study?" query.

OK, a third thing. The male students said that they got into the area in a younger age than the female respondents (...) That sounds about right to me. The male undergrads I knew, they got into gaming and MUDs and hardware hacking and BBSing in high school, and I knew guys in my LUD who were high schoolers or younger who worked on their school's LANs and wanted to Beowulf old lab machines. The only female undergrad who I knew for sure was pushed into the field by her dad, who was also a computer professional.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

First: *nods*

Second: I know all of two - someone in the CS program here in Bloomington, and the_crazy_lady. I know a lot more if you add in the Informatics students, but it's still in the twentyish range. Though if I ever take the idea ever beyond thought-experiemen and counting heads in class, tI'd be surprized. Mostly because I have data to prove oppiste as much as I have data to prove for.

Third: The only people I know how they got into computers had more self-taught/small groups persuasion than of the classes persuasion - but the sample size I have is really small, and not all of them went into pure/applied computer sciences. ( Though most of them stayed in the sciences. )

[the-crazy-lady.livejournal.com]

I must be an exception then, because I got into computers at a young age and was mostly self-taught because the few computer classes at Altoona were crap. And, in my CS class, two girls sit together in the back, while me and another girl sit up front but on separate sides of the room, surrounded by guys. Of course, the first day of class Jess was sitting in the area I'm sitting in now, and I tried to sit by her, but after a few class periods she moved to the back and I was just too stubborn to move XD

However, in my calc class, the three other girls always sit together near the front. I sit in the back, all alone XD

Frankly, though, the lack of estrogen doesn't bother me so much, probably because throughout elementary/middle/high school most of my friends were guys anyway. Of course, most of those guy friends were gay, but that's another thing all togther XD

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think it's a lack of estrogen, but the clustering is something I noticed.

I tend to pick a chair for some spatial reason, and stay there. But I'm usualy in a cluster anyways because the seat is near the front ( where you're more likely to find females than males, to begin with. )

Though in my more mixed classes, it's random. I wonder if it's always random, or there's a critical level that causes clustering.