Carolyn Turk
1 When I was a kid, everything in my bedroom was pink. I have two sisters and we had a complete miniature kitchen, a herd of My Little Ponies and several Barbie and Ken dolls. We didn't have any toy trucks, G. I. Joes or basketballs. We did have a Wiffle-ball set, but you would have been hard-pressed to find it in our playroom. Tomboys we weren't.
2 So some people may find it ironic that I grew up to be a mechanical engineer. In fact, I am the only female engineer at my company. In order to get my college degree, I had to take a lot of math and science classes. I also had to work with a team of students as part of a national competition to convert a gas-guzzling SUV into a hybrid electric vehicle—that's where I learned how to fix cars. I'm proud to say that I got A's in all my classes, including multivariable calculus and differential equations. I've always been pretty good at math and design, but I didn't understand where that could take me. I was expected to go to college, but no one ever told me I'd make a good engineer someday.
3 When I was in high school, I didn't know the first thing about engineering. I couldn't have distinguished a transmission from an alternator. The car I drove needed some work but I was afraid to take it to the mechanic. Because honestly, the mechanic could have shown me an electric can opener and said, "This is part of your car and it's broken—pay me to fix it," and I wouldn't have known any better.
4 At the end of my junior year of high school, I heard about a summer program designed to interest girls in engineering. The six-week program was free, and students were given college credit and a dorm room at the University of Maryland. I applied to the program, not because I wanted to be an engineer, but because I was craving independence and wanted to get out of my parents' house for six weeks.
5 I was accepted to the program and I earned six engineering credits. The next year I entered the university as an engineering major. Five years later I had a degree and three decent job offers.
6 I can't help shuddering when I hear about studies that show that women are at a disadvantage when it comes to math. They imply that I am somehow abnormal. I'm not, but I do know that if I hadn't stumbled into that summer program, I wouldn't be an engineer.
7 When I was growing up I was told, as many students are, to do what I am best at. But I didn't know what that was. Most people think that when you are good at something, it comes easily to you. But this is what I discovered: just because a subject is difficult to learn, it does not mean you are not good at it. You just have to grit your teeth and work harder to get good at it. Once you do, there's a strong chance you will enjoy it more than anything else.
8 In eighth grade I took algebra. On one test I got only 36 percent of the answers correct. I failed the next one, too. I started to think, maybe I'm just no good at this. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who didn't take my bad grades as a judgment of my abilities, but simply as an indication that I should study more. He pulled me aside and told me he knew I could do better. He let me retake the tests, and I pulled my grade up to an A.
9 I studied a lot in college, too. I had moments of panic while sitting underneath the buzzing fluorescent lights in the engineering library on Saturday afternoons, when I worried that the estrogen in my body was preventing me from understanding thermodynamics. But the guys in my classes had to work just as hard, and I knew that I couldn't afford to lose confidence in myself. I didn't want to choose between my femininity and a good career. So I reminded myself that those studies, the ones that say that math comes more naturally to men, are based on a faulty premise: that you can judge a person's abilities separate from the cultural cues that she has received since she was an infant. No man is an island. No woman is, either.
10 Why are we so quick to limit ourselves? I'm not denying that most little girls love dolls and most little boys love videogames, and it may be true that some people favor the right side of their brain, and others the left. But how relevant is that to me, or to anyone, as an individual? Instead of translating our differences into hard and fast conclusions about the human brain, why can't we focus instead on how incredibly flexible we are? Instead of using what we know as a reason why women can't learn physics, maybe we should consider the possibility that our brains are more powerful than we imagine.
11 Here's a secret: math and science don't come easily to most people. No one was ever born knowing calculus. A woman can learn anything a man can, but first she needs to know that she can do it, and that takes a leap of faith. It also helps to have selective hearing.