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

[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.