Tag: computer science (Page 4 of 4)

Nerdy is the New Cool

January 14, 2012 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Spring semester has begun. The readings have been assigned and the first homework assignments have been passed out. I am now counting down the days until my first (*squee*) ACM-W planning meeting on campus. It’s five days, in case you’re wondering. I thought I would find the task of being our campus’s first ACM-W Chapter President daunting, but instead I am so excited I might pee my pants. Well, I hope I don’t pee my pants, that would make for a very awkward first meeting. And really, this is just the preliminary brainstorming session to see how we are going to make this chapter work for the campus and for the girls of the Engineering and Computer Science Department.

A little bit of back story: The ACM is the Association of Computing Machinery. It’s the big organization that does all things computer science related. It releases all sorts of journals with research from the various disciplines and holds conferences and so forth. ACM-W is the branch of the ACM devoted specifically to women. Yes, we get our own branch- mostly because there is such an under-abundance of us in the field. I decided back in October that I really want to start a chapter of the ACM-W at our campus to help promote more women entering the computer science program. Even more than that, I wanted to have a group to help the women that were already in the computer science not only stay in the program, but get out of the degree everything they want (i.e. learning about the various disciplines, being able to talk about the kind of careers available, getting internships, etc.). After attending the Grace Hopper Celebrating Women in Computing 2011, my friend and I decided we were going to make this group a reality.

Just in the wake of me sending out the Facebook group invites and the emails confirming our first meeting time, this article in The Guardian came out. There is a growing crisis in the ratio of men to women in the tech industry. According to their article, only 148 girls took the computing A-levels out of 2,271 students. That’s 6.5% girls taking the examination to be able to study computing at the college level. That’s not a good number. Instead of improving, these numbers seem to be getting worse. Even in the United States, the numbers are pretty dismal. From personal experience I can say that I am the only woman in a class of 22 students taking Systems Programming, which is the prerequisite class for all the senior year courses. That means if I have any hope of working with other girls in my senior level classes next year, they will be transfer students. And what are the odds of someone transferring in for just their senior year courses?

The Guardian article links to another interesting article from the BBC Magazine from 2010 about Computer Engineer Barbie. There is no way that this Barbie doll has anything to do with the reality of being a computer engineer. I don’t know if the doll does more harm than good by portraying such a bizarrely feminine tech freak. Beyond all the obvious flaws with the doll, I take issue with the fact that for a girl to be a computer scientist that it is all about appearance. I believe a woman can dress however she feels comfortable (and if you’re at your desk coding all day, you’re going to want to be comfortable). The important part to being a woman in computer science is you have to have passion. You have to enjoy technology, learning new things, figuring out puzzles, creating the stuff that other people will want to play for hours on end, making the world a better place for everyone. It’s all about pushing boundaries and seeing how far you can get a program to take you. With that passion, you will be an excellent computer scientist, no matter your gender. Do we get that message from a doll like Computer Engineer Barbie? No, not especially. Is there a good way to have a doll transmit that message? Maybe. I’ll admit, we’ve come a long way from 1992’s “Math is tough” Barbie.

I think it’s high time for society to send a new message to the young girls. It’s okay to be passionate AND have fun doing math and science. Nerdy is the new cool. Unfortunately, I’m not a great singer, so I’ll have to figure out another way to get that message out there beside to my readers on this blog. As soon as I do, I’ll be doing it. I want the daughters of tomorrow to grow up thinking that the best job in the world would be to have the job their moms have- computer scientist.

Three Big Distractions

December 10, 2011 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. I could say it is because it is the weekend before final exams. The university has a random final exam time algorithm that assures no one will have to take two final exams at the exact same time. Well, for this semester, this algorithm has decreed that I will be taking my engineering physics final at 8:00 am Monday morning. But wait! It gets better! I then have to take my multivariate calculus final at 10:30 am Monday morning. Back to back the two worst exams I can imagine I’ll ever have to take. This weekend should be full of cramming for physics and calculus at the same time (while these two classes DO have a lot in common, it turns out the exam material is NOT going to overlap as much as one would hope). I’m aiming to graduate with some sort of “cum laude” attached to my degree, so I’m not taking these classes just to pass. I need to do well in them.

I could also say this post is short because something almost more important than acing those finals has come up. I’m set to have a phone interview with Microsoft for their summer internship Tuesday afternoon. The prospect of interviewing with Microsoft is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I mean, come on, it’s Microsoft. How awesome would working there for a summer be?? I will be asked to code. Over the phone. In real time. I know I will be asked about data structures and algorithms. I was informed that I should also be prepared to answer behavioral questions. All in all, I feel like I should be doing a lot of cramming for that this weekend.

However, all of these things don’t seem nearly as important as the fact that my new HTC Thunderbolt came in the mail Thursday. After waiting impatiently for the battery to charge, I turned it on just after midnight and started setting it up. Having come from Blackberry, there is a huge learning curve. I am learning how to use the touch screen for the first time. The virtual keyboard is not nearly as efficient as my old Blackberry’s physical QWERTY. I still haven’t figured out all the features and I still only have one email set up (who needs school email on their phone, anyway?). I love it all though. I immediately downloaded: Pocket Frogs- had never heard of this one, but it’s like Tamagotchi frogs, oooh so cute!-, Words with Friends- this is mostly so I can continue to lose games to my mom, now from ANYwhere!-, and Angry Birds- being a Blackberry user, this game was never free before so I have to give it a try. Once I spend a little more time with it, I’ll probably have a lot more intelligent things to say, good and bad. As far as smart-phones go, I’m definitely glad I’ve made the switch to Android. Maybe someday I’ll even find time to start programming some apps for it!

Next week, I’ll let you know how the Microsoft interview and finals went, but more importantly, how I’m coming along learning my new phone.

Happy Times at Grace Hopper 2011

November 26, 2011 / kateringland / 0 Comments

This year, November 9^th through 11^th, I went to my first technical convention. The Grace Hopper Celebrating Women in Computing is not your typical convention, however. It is plugged as primarily for women attendees (men were, of course, welcome but it turns out very few elected to come). It is held in a different city in the United States every fall and I was lucky enough to have it come near me this year, Portland, Oregon. Not only that, but as a student, I was selected through lottery to become a Hopper, which is a student volunteer at the convention. This meant that in exchange for a few hours of my time during the weekend I would receive a refund on my entrance fee. Not an insignificant amount of money. Even though it was in the middle of my school semester, all my professors made allowances for me to go and my computer science professor was particularly enthusiastic that all the women in his class attend.

I knew all this was going to be a huge opportunity for me to grow as a woman in technology and as a person in general. I didn’t fully realize how much of an effect it was going to have on me until I was a part of it.

I arrived at my hotel the evening before the convention opened. I had to be at the convention center before 7 am in order to get debriefed on my Hopper shifts. I wanted to get to my hotel with plenty of time to walk around and time how long it would take me to get to various places, but I ended up packing and repacking so many times that we didn’t get there until 8:30 at night. Now, bear in mind, that my house is a 30 minute drive to the hotel room. I was packing out of sheer nervousness and excitement for the weekend. Had I forgotten something (which I invariably always do) I knew I could just run home and get it, but that didn’t matter. It was the act of getting ready for the trip that made the whole thing seem more real for me. I spent so much time in the weeks preceding thinking and talking about how wonderful and fun the convention was going to be that I had really worked up into this glorious thing, the night before I was worrying my expectations were too high.

I hadn’t. I got there early the first day to go to my shift debriefing, as I mentioned. The place was very quiet, there were only a few early birds like me. I didn’t have to wait in line to pick up my goodie bag and badge. Having never been to a conference or convention like this before, I had no idea how much free loot I was going to get. The crazy amount of swag was impressive. My only comment to the companies out there would be: 4 different compact mirrors? Really? That’s what webcams are for. Someone is CLEARLY not in touch with today’s technical woman. I would have been much happier with cute flash drives.

On the plus side, Google and Microsoft both had very nice t-shirts (women’s cut ++) that I actually feel sexy in. There is something about Microsoft’s red “Geek Girl” shirt that makes me feel really good. Also, Microsoft wins again by giving out air plants at their booth instead of more plastic crap, thereby showing they have a vested interest in reducing their carbon footprint. I’d say they get the overall prize for best free stuff ever.

One of my first thoughts as I wandered the halls locating the essentials (coffee stands, food carts, escape routes, and bathrooms) was, “The lines for the bathrooms are going to be ENORMOUS. What a pain.” Well, apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had that thought because almost every single men’s room door had this taped on them:

Glorious. In his speech about how important diversity is to the future of technology and encouraging women to join the technological field could only be a good thing, President of the ACM, Alain Chesnais said that he finally understood what it was to be in the minority because he had to walk halfway across the convention center just to go to the bathroom.

Overall, there was an energy about the conference and a camaraderie that I have not really felt before. The closest I think I’ve ever come to it is at PAX (when I had the good fortune of going a few years ago.) There were about 2600 women in attendance at Grace Hopper and they were all there to help each other out and give the kind of support that is hard to get in a male dominated classroom or workplace.

I learned a lot from everyone I interacted with and a motivation to excel in my field was rooted in me that I didn’t know existed. I came home from the conference with a desire to pursue my dreams of making my own computer games and starting an ACM-W chapter at my school. I want to share this support and courage that I gained from the women at the convention with all the women in my department that didn’t have the good fortune of attending. I guess you could say I want to pass it on or pay it forward.

Most importantly, I want to keep going because I’m not just doing it for myself but all the women who will come after me, who perhaps just need a little more encouragement to get there.

Grace Hopper Celebrating Women in Computing 2012 is being held in Baltimore, Maryland next year. I’m already brainstorming ways that I am going to get there. This year’s convention was that good.

You mean there are women in the tech industry?

November 19, 2011 / kateringland / 0 Comments

As I sat down to write this blog, I was consumed with an overwhelming sense of anxiety and self-doubt. Chances are that everyone reading this will understand the feeling of not feeling good enough. However, I was very excited to begin the process of writing and writing about a subject I am very passionate about and then I froze.

I didn’t just freeze in the sense that I had a bad case of writer’s block and couldn’t get my blog written. My whole life froze. I spent an entire three day weekend doing absolutely nothing but watching streaming on Netflix and playing the Sims 3 Pets expansion, with a little WoW thrown in just to show you how completely I managed to waste my time. Something must be written if I ever expect my blog to become something more than a mere idea. Where to start?

I am an undergraduate computer science student. I am in my “third” year of the program and plan to graduate in 2013. What I will do after that is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I’m hoping it will become evident in the near future. I just started taking my computer classes at my university this summer after having transferred from another institution. Several weeks into the fall term I had a woman in my calculus class (we are actually in almost every class together) come up to me, curious as to who I was and where I had come from. She asked me what my major was (this being a small campus, the only students in calculus class are engineers and computer scientists). When I told her computer science, she was delighted. “That brings are numbers up to…” she paused to count in her head. “Ten women!”

Yes, in the computer science department on my campus there are only 10 women declared as either undergraduates or graduates (we have one woman in the graduate program.) I did say that we are a small school, but the computer science department still has about 100 students in it. That’s only 10% women, for those not inclined to do the math. The sad truth is, however, that this isn’t a particularly low ratio for a university computer science program. The current average is about 14%. This is the only profession in which the ratio of women to men is getting smaller instead of larger. To me this is a wholly depressing.

There are people out there that have dedicated their careers to figuring out why this ratio of women to men has become so skewed. Books have been written about it. For me, though, it is a very personal and a real everyday experience. When I started my studies in computer science, I had no idea that women were so underrepresented. Yet, I came into the program with the same stereotypes and misconceptions that I am sure dissuade many of the women that had the slightest inclination to study computer science. It has taken a long time (years) for me to convince myself that I am just as good as the men in my classes and that I’m not inherently “bad” with computers simply because I am a woman. Even at home, when I’m working on my own computer system, I still catch myself deferring to my brother or my husband for their knowledge when I have it all inside my own head. I spent more classes that I care to admit aiming to “just pass” thinking I would never have the ability to be a top student.

The bottom line is confidence. Just like in writing beginning this blog, I have found something I am passionate about. I love computers and being a nerd. I would like to share my thoughts and experiences as one of the few, the proud women in computer science. I want to share my stories from the front and have some fun while I’m doing it.

Just remember: don’t panic.

Nerdy is the New Cool

Three Big Distractions

Happy Times at Grace Hopper 2011

You mean there are women in the tech industry?

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