>as for me, it *never* occurred to me to pursue a computing degree when
>i was
>in college in the 70s. i had had Zero exposure to computers. They were big
>boxes in AC'ed rooms, in my mind. I'm do not remember what possessed me to
>take a fortran 101 class at 8 am during winter quarter of my senior year
<!>
>but it must have been related to my minor in economics and love of math.
While in the Grammar school back in Ireland there was no mention of
computers at all in the '70s. The nearest we got to a computer was when
fellow snob came back after holidays with a calculator that did the
multiply, divide and our mind boggling square roots. If the teacher knew we
had this toy, he would not have given us all those high marks! But the
blasted thing was as nearly as big as my portable today, so exam usage was
out of the question. We were only allowed to do the calculations using the
slide rule.
What I fail to understand, is why the girls and boys tend to split on the
special subjects. Besides when, the boys just did the Sciences because of
the fancy of their fellow female students and vise a versa when the girls
followed the boys into the mechanics, regardless of the desire of the
subject. There was this genuine trend that boys follow physics and girls
follow chemistry, why? Is it the same now where we have the explosives,
the noisy and the extreme elements in study environments for the boys, and
the calm, the beautiful and the naturalistic elements desired by the girls?
The computer science or the mathematics were still taboo for the girls when
I returned back to University in the late '80s. A typical IT track class
had only 2 girls out of 40 dealing with systems and computers. Usually,
only one progressed to MSc in IT, this makes it 50% of girls, where the
avg. was less than 10% for the graduated boys to progress to MSc in CS or
IT.
I believe it is the same with many Universities over here, east side of the
Atlantic. When you have these ratios you end up with very determined girls
in our field and the boys take things a little easier. When I worked in
help desk / call centres, every time there was a girl in charge. I wish I
had the same girls on my team today.
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David Mullins
Ajaz Communications, Gallipoli, Italy
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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