Diversity

My daughter is a junior in college. (She’s in class right now and won’t read this blog post until later. So if you come back in a couple of hours and this post is radically different, you’ll know she said, “Hey, you can’t say that!”) Anyway, more to the point, she has only a few units left until her major, mathematics, is completed. But she still had quite a few units she needed in order to graduate. So she decided that instead of taking random classes, she’d add a second minor. One in computer science. It’s been an eye-opener for her. Let’s just say...computer science majors are different than math majors. (Though Ariel says that the personal hygiene issues are about the same.)

When Ariel goes to a computer science class, she doesn’t have to open a door. Some young man rushes to open it for her. You see, at this university there are almost no girls in computer science. The other day some guy asked her out, before he knew her name. If there is another girl in the class, she skips across the room and introduces herself to Ariel.

She’s even had a professor say, “Look, we have a girl in our class. Diversity!” Being that Ariel is quiet, this is an experience for her. In math, names are all ill-understood social niceties. If the professor knows your name, it usually means that you’ve been at his office hours three times a week for the entire semester. In comp sci, they listen attentively to make sure they master the enunciation of Ariel’s name properly. This is especially important in the South where, for reasons unknown to me, they miss the final “L” in her name and call her Aria. (Or maybe we bite off the end with our clipped New England pronunciations.)

Anyway, now that she’s a comp sci minor, I’m really glad she’s got her mace—she can fend off those hordes of girl-deprived computer geeks.