Saturday, September 11, 2010

How Sofia ended up in Computer Science

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/File:Flatland-turtle.png

I was a very big science geek as a child: reading, watching videos, and trying experiments that looked a lot more like voodoo than actual science. I'm shocked that no one got poisoned or blown up. Biology was the science I explored the most, because I found plants and animals fascinating. There were times where I simultaneously had several ant farms, a few dozen flowers or vegetables growing, toads I'd found outside, and baby birds I was nursing to adulthood. Even into my teens I was primarily interested in life sciences, to the extent that it was originally my major when I started undergrad.

The first experience I remember with computers was a summer science, math and computing class that I can't place a date on, but which included some turtle graphics style programming. Sometime later, I had a handed down IBM PCjr in my bedroom. I have only a vague memory of playing games on the PCjr and being very confused when I tried to work with Basic. I think my mother gave me the machine because of some spelling and math quiz games that were available for it. I couldn't have been older than 8 at the time, so I'm pretty unclear on the details now. I just remember the combination of entertainment and mystery that computers presented.

When I was in about 4th grade, my dad started a computer repair business out of his home and I got to see the inner workings of computers up close (both literally and metaphorically.) I got to use a soldering iron and help debug software and hardware issues with almost no points of reference except what we could gather experimentally. Neither of us had much formal training, so it was a very non-hierarchical collaboration. Dad had done some repair for Nintendo and Sega gaming systems before, making him the de facto hardware tech and leaving me to explore the software side. I spent most of my pre-teen and early teen years engrossed in hacking other people's software. Learning how to modify the rules of the games from the $5 bin at Walmart and trying to find just the right combinations of drivers and settings to get newer operating systems to work on too-old hardware for my family and other people like us who could barely afford to buy their own system, even when it was used and outdated.

I loved the puzzles and the challenges in working with software, but I hated feeling like it all belonged to someone else. The web was the first place I found where I could easily make something mine. HTML was straightforward enough that I was quickly able to look at other people's examples and build my own ideas from it. My website was always a hideous piece of experimental art, trying out some new formatting or even the occasional script. In high school I explored the world of C and C++ with what I considered a reasonable amount of success at the time. Out of recognition for the joy that computing brought me, I signed up for a few CS classes along with my beginning in-major Biology classes (which I had been told were serious science, rather than those silly games and web pages.) As I got into classes, I found that my enjoyment of life sciences was more informal and my love for computing was something much deeper than I'd thought. Near the end of my undergraduate work, I tried summer and part-time jobs in professional programming, but didn't find them to be as rewarding as the more scientific and academic side of things. I stayed for my Master's, during which I got my first chance to TA and absolutely loved working with students. I'm now working on my PhD and enjoy a healthy balance between research and teaching.

I feel like I should also tell the story of how I became (or, rather, discovered myself as) a woman in computer science. Despite being biologically male, I found myself always identifying with females and fitting better into female roles. While I faced some opposition from adults and other kids, I was just fine with being a "sissy" in my younger years. In high school, I found that people had much less tolerance for those who didn't fit the roles assigned to them. I felt that the only way to be safe again was to culminate an image of being angry, anti-social, and unpredictable. It didn't entirely stop the violence, but it made people a little more wary about when and how they did it. I learned quickly that I couldn't depend on adults to stop it or even not to participate in it. This led to me entering college still presenting the image of a disconnected, surly, tough outsider. College was in my home town, so all of the same triggers (and most of the same bullies) were still right there. I got involved with GLBT groups and privately explored many different aspects of my personality, but my emotions on the topic of gender had been so muddled that even I didn't know why I felt that so many things in my life didn't fit me. It wasn't until I moved away for grad school that I really got a handle on what felt most natural to me and why. The resistance of others had stuck with me so firmly that I found myself repeating the mantra "just don't be a girl" when confronting any gender-related conflict. Finally realizing the voice saying this in my head wasn't my own, I came out to myself and those around me. I've been amazed at the level of support from my partner, friends, students, and colleagues, especially since my vision of the most likely outcome involved pitchforks and torches. I've spent the last little while learning what it's like to be a woman in academia, computing, restaurants, airports, and just about everywhere else. It's amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

1 comment:

Sofia said...

This is a post I wrote in hopes of contributing to the CompSci Woman blog[1]. I also figured a new introduction would be useful for readers, anyway, since the blog has been quiet lately and a few things have changed in my world.

[1]http://www.compsciwoman.com/