That’s An Education – Part 2

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Why School (at least for now) Is Not My Way

I explained in That’s an Education – Part 1 that school taught me a lot of things. It didn’t teach me, though, how more school can work for me. At least not right now. I have not closed the door on school completely. I can’t be sure that it will never be what I want. I’m just opening other doors for a while.

As I said in Part One, what high school taught me was so surprising. I thought I would find a place that fit. My high school, like most, was a place where society’s rules were taught. We were forming groups by common traits, physical hierarchies, and pre-intellectual assumptions. I found it difficult to fit into any one category, but fitting in seemed to be a requirement. Looking back, no category or even a combination of categories was going to fit. I didn’t know then that I didn’t actually have to fit in to belong.

In high school, I hadn’t let myself think about what I wanted in my life yet. This showed up in my friendships. I had several friends. I stay in touch with a few and I cherish them. But I never found a group that had the potential to remain intact for a lifetime of friendship. I thought by graduation that I would have the lifelong friendship thing kind of sorted out. I didn’t. College must be the place, I guessed. Nope. Even with the experience of high school, finding my place there was even harder.

STEM: Something That’s Exclusively for Men

Finding where I fit in college turned out to be even more complicated than high school. More socially suffocating frameworks showed up. I entered the world of STEM. I knew that women were only represented at the most by around 20% in STEM majors. What I didn’t know was how being outnumbered actually played out. I could not believe the different treatment that women received (that I received) in my classes. 

It wasn’t just being outnumbered, though. It’s the false assumption that men are just better at STEM that overwhelmed me. Their mistakes and failures are the exception. Women’s mistakes and failures seem to be the expectation. I did not handle this framework well at all. Men aren’t truly better at the academics of STEM, but the belief that they are fuels the outcome like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s just one example of what I experienced in STEM. I always felt anxious before exams, so I often arrived early to at least have a chance to pick a good spot and settle in. I was actually told by a male teaching assistant that I had to move before a test after being surrounded by male students. We were just too close together. When I told him that I had arrived first to choose my spot and asked him to choose someone else, he said no, that it was “easier” for me to move. Easier for him, not for me. He wasn’t going to challenge his dudes. 

What was easier for me never mattered in these classes, and frankly, it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have it easy and neither should anyone else. But, the easy road seemed to open up in front of male students. Their opinions mattered. They were heard. Not to mention the implication that I had to move away from the male students to take away any possibility that I would cheat off some dude’s test. Let’s face it, how else would I succeed?

What I saw were women always being questioned differently and challenged differently for no academic reason. It was my first glimpse into the real world of gender inequality. Frankly, it changed how I approach my adult life. It helped me see that the world is a place where if women don’t respond appropriately (by this I mean timidly) to recognition and criticism, there are consequences. We have to defer our places, and holding them requires tremendous effort. 

I realized that my effort was already stretched. I was using it to respond to competitive situations. They were already baked into academia. Male students, it appeared to me, came through the door presumed to be intelligent enough to be there. Female students? We had to prove it. Even when we did, we were just lucky, probably cheated, or were just stereotypical nerdy bitches filling the quota. Wow, that’s harsh. The reality is harsh. That is one surprising sidewalk.

Born into a world that I was supposed to succeed in if I followed that straight line through college, had shown up as a world that said I wasn’t automatically allowed to participate. Thankfully, I didn’t have to keep walking on this sidewalk. At the same time, I was realizing that the world is built with so many locked doors. I had to find the courage to grab the keys.

I have no obligation to be an exceptional woman. None of us do. We should be able to participate with the same expectations as men. It should be part of our liberty as humans. We should not have to wait for it to be our right, and we should not have to unlock the doors. There is a difference between being recognized as born with liberty and having to fight for a right. One is inherently mine. The other needs to be granted. If I have to fight, at least I can choose my battles. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to?

I’m totally aware that once I figured it all out, this is the part where I’m supposed to know that my response to my STEM experience is part of the problem. That women will never be able to overcome the issues we face without all women staying and fighting. That I lack the courage to find ways to overcome. If women can’t find a place in the established world, what do I think I’m going to accomplish outside of it? 

Maybe I do lack that kind of courage, but I’m choosing to place my courage outside of academia, at least for now. It’s the establishment, after all, that’s the bigger issue for me. It’s not just how I’m treated in it, it’s that there seems to be a requirement that I have to be there to live a life that is meaningful. I disagree. I don’t have to be there and, honestly, I don’t want to be. Life is brilliant out here.

Trying the STEM sidewalk was a crucial part of why I realized that college is not for me. Without trying to walk on it and then failing to stay on it, I wouldn’t have been exposed to certain realities. I’m grateful for my time on that sidewalk. This path showed me that my self worth was elsewhere. There are so many more places and doors to discover and unlock.

Accepting the Unacceptable

All the ways I’m going are unacceptable to the world I was born into. I’m not doing the things that will make me who I’m expected to be. I’m asking people in my life to stay with me even if they don’t understand my choices. Those who really see me have stayed. Those who don’t, didn’t. I don’t need to fit in anymore. Who I’m becoming is someone who only has to be accepted by one person – me. 

Now, I put very little pressure on myself to make my life look a certain way to other women, or my parents, or guys I date, or my friends. This isn’t harsh or without feeling. It in no way means I don’t care about them. It’s with a lot of feeling that I got here. I’ve had a lot of revelations, a few hard choices, some pain, and some compromise. 

The world I’m choosing is one that has unacceptable parts. One where I will be criticized and misunderstood. I’m trying to keep a good perspective on where this comes from. A society that likes straight lines and for all of us to stay on the sidewalk. One that says I must fight like men to be equal to them. One that says I must be married and have children if I don’t choose a career. 

It’s as if women are allowed creativity in their life choices as a side gig. If we want to be equal in society, that equal role must look like what men have already said it is. And let’s not forget that we have to also keep the traditional feminine intact. Hmmm… Not sure that ever works.

This framework keeps women in a socially constructed space which is not authentically me. It’s not the way that is true to what I find on my own. Not finding my way for myself is what is unacceptable. So, I paradoxically live in a world where I accept the unacceptable as the way I’m going. The recognition is not needed, and the criticism is not persuasive. I’m not making choices for them.

One response to what I have written here is that I’m being too critical of education, especially college. That this is just my overly sensitive approach to the real world, or that I’m justifying not being able to make it there. That’s actually okay with me, and these responses hold a little truth. I didn’t make it there. I never figured out where “there” was. Recognizing all of this led me here. 

Here… It’s pretty awesome! It’s better for me to be empowered as a woman pursuing a life she wants both because of and in spite of the world I was supposed to live in. I don’t want to be a woman who stays in the framework and finds herself looking for ways to tear it down. I’ll very quickly miss the rest of my life. I will find ways to actively change the gender dynamic off of the sidewalk.

I owe other women my friendship and empathy. A place to see our commonality and learn from our differences. If it turns out that this can have a powerful part to play in the fight to be accepted equally in society, that’s an amazing result. I’m learning…

Off to my next class!  Are you taking it, too?

Check out “Education” on the Poems page