
I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake - andrelaszlo
http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/aug/23/wasted-four-years-of-life-gender-stereotype-careers
======
adekok
FTA:

> My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level
> subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts.

And in the next paragraph:

> Without realising it, I was a victim of a gender stereotype reinforced since
> birth, that men do science and maths and women do arts or languages.

Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was
trapped by a "gender stereotype"?

She doesn't see the contradiction between the two statements.

She could have accepted personal responsibility, and said "I screwed up. I
didn't look into the job prospects, or the salaries. I just had a romantic
notion and went with it, against the advice of people who knew better."

> Now I have a five-year-old daughter. I don't want her to blindly follow
> gender roles the way I did.

Is she an adult, or an automaton with no free will?

> I want her to embrace the fact that a science or technical degree will not
> limit her creativity but expand it and broaden her horizons far more than my
> arts background could

i.e. "I was bigoted against STEM degress, but now I realize that they're
useful, too".

This article is interesting. Not for it's promotion of STEM degrees. But for
it's shameless bigotry, and total denial of personal responsibility.

~~~
sampo
She also wrote:

 _" Computer science, technology and physics just did not figure in my teenage
world view. Nobody popular in my school chose to study those subjects."_

She gave more weight to the peer pressure from other teenage girls, especially
from the popular girls, than she gave to the word of her teacher. Not very
uncommon.

Peer pressure on what is considered "cool" vs. "lame" is a strong force in
teenagers. I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not
immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility.

~~~
altrego99
It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way
you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do, you
will not get noticed.

You have to stand out. You have to do what the others are not doing - and make
a stand for it. And you will get noticed. For example if everyone in your
class smokes, and you politely decline everytime you are asked to, people will
notice. If everyone wants to do a PhD but you think of it as a waste of time
and want to get out, people will notice.

And people will even follow you.

~~~
Yhippa
> It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way
> you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do,
> you will not get noticed.

When you are growing up I think it's very difficult for kids and teenagers to
avoid pressure especially for something as prevalent as this. I feel like
"nerd" fashion is in so you see that a lot in society as rappers and athletes
sport that look so that aspect of the nerd life is acceptable presently.

The other aspects of nerdery that might not be socially acceptable to
teenagers are playing with robots, programming a web app, and building a
mobile application. To me if you like doing things like that you are probably
the type of person okay with going into computer science or engineering.

Until that's just as socially acceptable as joining the football team I doubt
you're going to see much mindset change around the idea of going into
engineering vs traditional liberal arts.

------
timje1
My friend has this exact same degree (spanish and french), she wandered off to
get a masters in International Development and then went on to create various
programs around north-east Africa and Central America. Who says it's a
worthless degree? It just sounds like this author didn't manage to do anything
with it.

Also good writing (taught by these 'useless' BA degrees) is a damned handy
thing to have. I know people that have gone into marketing, tendering,
publicity, reporting, technical writing ... the list goes on... it's possibly
longer than the one for STEM degrees, which can pin your skills to one sector
or role.

edit: quoting her response: "That is an absolutely preposterous article!! If I
hadn't studied Spanish and French I couldn't have worked abroad and I wouldn't
have the job I have now. Language skills are vital! If she had written this
about a history degree then maybe..."

~~~
bobbbinsIII
Your friend's career path is not that usual. in practice, most people with
this sort of degree will not get the opportunity to make much use of it in the
future. None of your listed jobs specifically require a humanities degree, nor
is it true that you need to study such a degree to develop good writing
skills.

~~~
timje1
You don't need to study CS to get good technical skills either. I didn't say a
humanities degree is the only way to get good writing skills, only that a
humanities degree develops your writing skills. I propose that gaining good
reading, comprehension and written communication skills would come in handy in
a wide variety of careers, including software development.

~~~
bobbbinsIII
it's much more likely that a technical student has developed good
communication skills than the other way round. in the real world, people are
not required to write in depth literary analysis: most people have all the
core reading and written communications skills they need after high school.

it's also important to point out that your friend's example is a special case.
when looking at the value of a particular degree, it's important to consider
the full distribution of outcomes.

------
nekgrim
"I'm hoping that my daughter will embrace her inner geek and want to change
the world." And what if she don't have an inner geek...?

You didn't waste time. You lived. And now you are judging the younger
yourself, and saying "I made mistakes", but you can't know what life would
have been if you studied maths. Maybe this article would have the same title,
and end with "Don't make mistakes like I do, follow your heart and study art".

But we love to have girls in IT. Welcome.

~~~
James_Duval
I agree with this comment, although it might not appear that I do from the
other remark I made in this thread.

Spending four years supporting myself playing poker for just-under-minimum-
wage on average was a waste of time in terms of career/hard skills, but gave
me an instinctive grasp of game theory, excellent budgeting skills, improved
my self-confidence and was generally a lot of fun. I don't know if I'd be
where I am now without those four wasted years.

EDIT: Oh! I remember the salient point I was going to make - I doubt she'd be
earning around £250+ from a Guardian article without that liberal arts degree!

------
bane
Go to school for your job, study what you love for a lifetime. Get that degree
that will pay the bills, but then once you start work, make it your hobby to
study music or 17th century French Lit or whatever.

If you like the group study dynamic, join a book club or audit some classes at
the local community college or state school. Most of the higher level lit
classes have very few students anyways and they'll welcome another voice in
the discussion.

Better yet _start_ a book club, or a lit discussion group. Put that tech
degree to work and make an online version of this group. If it gets big try
and monetize it!

~~~
rsanders
That's great if you only want it to be a hobby. How many people here would
think it a good idea to take a lucrative job in waste management or accounting
and do a little hacking on the side?

~~~
albeec13
You'd be surprised :P

------
peterwwillis
> Anybody can learn to code and these days it's as important as reading and
> writing.

So, assuming like 1 million Americans can code (....might be a bit
exaggerated), approximately 99.68% of Americans are illiterate? Holy shit,
we're doomed!

As of 2012, 16% of the American population lived in poverty, including 20% of
children. Learning to code is difficult enough, and even more so if you are
struggling to make enough to eat and keep a roof over your head.

> I was wrong as a young woman to presume that technology was not a creative
> subject – that's sadly a presumption still shared by a third of school-age
> girls today.

Many young men also presume technology is not a creative subject. In her case,
she was just a regular human being that wasn't interested in computers. This
has nothing to do with gender.

You also don't have to be a genius to realize a degree in literature or
language isn't going to have a huge job market. There is a market for
translators, and being bilingual helps a lot in a variety of fields, but just
speaking spanish or french is not a career path. Gender stereotype did not
determine she had to pick that degree.

------
jpswade
In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, Apple Computer founder and college
dropout Steve Jobs credited a Reed College calligraphy class for his focus on
choosing quality typefaces for the Macintosh.

He seems to do alright.

~~~
James_Duval
He might indeed be doing alright if he had taken a little more interest in
science.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-
Jo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-Jobs-
regretted-trying-to-beat-cancer-with-alternative-medicine-for-so-long.html)

I wonder how many years of his life that wasted?

~~~
run2xs
Likely, none.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81xnvgOlHaY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81xnvgOlHaY)

~~~
James_Duval
> John A. McDougall, M.D., is an American Irish physician and author whose
> philosophy is that degenerative disease can be prevented and treated with a
> low-fat, whole foods, plant-based/vegan diet – especially one based on
> starches such as potatoes, rice, and corn – which excludes all animal foods
> and added vegetable oils.

Do you think the guy _might_ have a horse in this race?

------
angersock
The liberal arts are invaluable as a means of cultivating the potential within
oneself.

That said, you need food to feed a garden while it is being cultivated, and
nothing puts bread on the table quite as robustly as engineering degrees.

~~~
morgante
This author completely misses the value in the liberal arts, which I'm saying
as a computer science major. Definitely my best decision was to study CS as
part of a liberal arts curriculum (where 1/2 of my courses have nothing to do
with CS). This is really how it should be done.

Sadly, the liberal arts are dying out (or, in the case of the UK, don't exist
at the university level). In such a system, I'd actually _encourage_ people to
study the arts, not engineering. It's easy enough to simultaneously learn to
code and put bread on the table from that. (Most useful technical skills are
learned outside the classroom.)

Until the non-classroom resources for learning the liberal arts rival those
for learning CS, in an either-or situation (like the author's) one should
definitely study the arts.

~~~
angersock
_" Until the non-classroom resources for learning the liberal arts rival those
for learning CS, in an either-or situation (like the author's) one should
definitely study the arts."_

There are millenia of materials and practice in the liberal arts available for
consumption; there is only perhaps half a century of resources for CS. I don't
think it's unreasonable to believe that self-schooling liberal arts is
possible.

One does wonder why the teaching of liberal arts is dying out--there may well
be some systemic issue that is causing worse teaching or relevance. The issue
may well lie with the current practice of liberal arts.

------
eksith
There's a huge difference between what you may fall in love with and what pays
the bills, but to categorize what she fell in love with as a waste is... well,
a waste. I don't know how hard it would be to pursue literature _and_
technology (I don't imagine there are many places that would cater to this
since they're seen as disparate), but there are ways to accomplish this.

I also don't think it's a good idea to push technology as a general field on
anyone, gender be damned, if their heart isn't in it. It's good to try your
hand to see if that's something you want to follow, but goals without passion
fizzle quickly and that may not be enough to support yourself.

There are also cases where people have pursued technology only to feel deeply
unfulfilled and/or unchallenged and move on to something else. Just because
tech is everywhere, doesn't mean it's the only thing around.

------
aet
I really look forward to a world filled with only engineering majors -- sounds
exciting.

~~~
gfodor
I am guessing this is sarcasm but the mind boggles at how much progress could
be made if more people went into science and engineering majors. Not just due
to their increased direct contributions, but also the effect it would have on
political discourse and culture. We could do a lot worse.

~~~
FN0rdique
It's difficult to overstate how misguided this is. Engineering types are
already seen as the ones who picked the right major, so we're seeing a flood
of people heading into those fields.

The result thus far has been that we have more ways than ever before to target
advertisements and share stupid pictures of ourselves and offer
interpretations of rap lyrics. Has this improved western culture, as far as
you're concerned?

~~~
kazagistar
Science and engineering has influenced culture far more then traditional
literature in the past half century. You might not like the direction our
culture has taken, but you are far more likely to be able to change it with
technology then with prose.

------
ajiang
Everyone, successful or not (however you choose to define that), walks a
different path in life to get where they are. Our experiences in total shape
the persons that we are, the way we approach problems, the way we create, and
the way we interact with others. The author, with the benefit of knowing where
she is, is reflecting on the other roads - some perhaps shorter, faster - she
could have taken to get there.

What I take away from her post is that if you are ambitious in your career
(like she seems to be), it is important to understand the realities of your
major / concentration. For those that have passions in humanities and other
non-"hard" majors, pursue your dream as long as you can accept the statistical
likelihoods for your career post-graduation.

------
mathattack
There's a gender bias question here, and a value of language learning
question.

My take on the languages side - they are enormously valuable if you bring
something else to the table. If all you can do is speak 4 languages, it's
novel but doesn't open doors. If you can program Python, price a derivative,
or design a bridge - then the language becomes invaluable. Who should we send
to talk to the client in Spain? Jane speaks Spanish. Who should set up the
support team in Prague? Bill is good with that language and culture stuff.

As for the gender issue, it's much tougher. It's easy to say, "Let's encourage
our kids" and a lot starts there. It's hard to change society, but you can
always start with the local schools.

------
codva
As the parent of a sophomore history major, this is something that I think
about a lot. However, my son has a deep, deep passion for history. Advising
him to get a CS degree just for job purposes seemed stupid, and considering
how much help he needed from his high school sister to get through his Python
class last year.... Although I am happy that his liberal arts college requires
everybody to take 2 CS classes, I am also mystified why non-CS majors take one
python and one C++ class. Wouldn't continuing with Python make more sense?

However, if you are going to major in history, or English, or something like
that you really do need to have a plan from freshman year about how you are
going to turn it into a job when you graduate.

~~~
JonnieCache
Maybe watch this with him, it's George Dyson (Freeman's son) recounting the
story of the development of the computer at the IAS. It links CS to that
fulcrum of the 20th century, the invention of the nuclear bomb. It's also
highly entertaining, a very story told through coffee and ink stained punch
cards.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s)

Thinking about it perhaps your son is more into knights, emperors and
prophecies than cold war paranoia. It's a great video anyway.

~~~
codva
Actually, he is a pretty big fan of cold war paranoia :) Military history is
his passion. He is hoping to turn into a job as a historian with the National
Park Service or something like that.

I'm definitely going to watch that video though.

------
cafard
" Last week's A-Level results show only 245 girls took A-Level computing this
year, compared with 5,153 who took Spanish. This is a decline of 1.3% from
last year, despite the fact that the few girls who took A-Level computing
outperformed boys."

A 1.3% decline means that three fewer girls took A-Level computing this year,
doesn't it?

The liberal arts are very much worth doing. I was a liberal arts major, and
have three regrets: I should have studied math further (bailed out after
multi-variable calculus and differential equations; I should have studied more
foreign languages; and I should have realized that computing did not begin and
end with Fortran IV entered onto punch cards. (Yes, this was all a while ago.)

------
dbough
I'd have to agree on the gender role issue. I'm a father of two daughters and
want them to be whatever they want to be. I don't agree with the statement
that everyone needs to learn how to code, or the fact that language and art
are a waste of time. If everyone knew and did the same things, the world would
kinda suck (and finding a good paying job would be impossible.)

~~~
magmadiver
> I don't agree with the statement that[...]language and art are a waste of
> time

I agree with you, they're excellent hobbies.

~~~
FN0rdique
I'd go with "foundational parts of the human experience," but feel free to
dismiss them as "hobbies," I guess.

~~~
clusterfoo
> I'd go with "foundational parts of the human experience"

But not necessarily professions. The notion of "professional artist" is fairly
recent. Most of the great artists, pre-20th century, had day jobs: from
Chaucer (diplomat, astronomer) to Lewis Carroll (Mathematician).

And, if anything, I'd think that art _not_ being a profession only made their
art better. I mean, how much can someone who all he does is write all day can
possibly have to say?

Take Asimov, for example. I wonder how interesting his science fiction would
have turned out had he not been, first and foremost, an actual scientist?

------
izztmzzt
Do what you love, not what you think is going to get you the big salary.

If you love languages or art, there are certainly ways to support yourself and
do them.

I think it's pretty outrageous to say anyone not studying STEM is wasting
their time.

Sure, STEM enables our modern infrastructure, but the arts provide the things
that just make life better -- movies, stories, music, etc... World would be
pretty boring without.

~~~
bobbbinsIII
the vast majority of people studying humanities degrees do not LOVE the
subject. they just choose a certain path after high school that seems
interesting. the production of culture has very little to do with what people
study at university...

~~~
Iterated
Yup. "Math is hard, I'm going to study psychology! Weeeee!"

------
kaidajekri
Being able to communicate information is often as important as knowing the
information in the first place. Otherwise the knowledge would die out with the
person who discovered it.

A civilisation dies if it has no culture, nothing is created. We'd become
Borg-esque.

------
nraynaud
"My degree in French and Spanish – despite being a decent grade from a good
university – is not worth the paper it's written on." we're probably talking
about a few dozen thousand dollars piece of paper anyways, nothing cheap.

------
wads
" I saw myself as an accomplished novelist or an interpreter for the EU." Yes,
following your dream is, most of the time, waste of time.

On serious note "My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics
as my A-level subjects" she were given choice and good advice. She chose to
pursue what seemed best to her, and now she is saying "choices still heavily
gender stereotyped". IF she was about to go to engineering and someone would
have forced her to choose linguistics THEN it would be "gender
stereotypes"/oppression problem. Now it's her inability to think ahead that
got her waste 4 years, and it's her inability to accept her own mistake that
leads her to cursing "gender stereotypes". I am amazed word "patriarchy"
wasn't used in article.

"I'm hoping that my daughter will embrace her inner geek and want to change
the world." Suggestion: Instead of pushing to one direction let child explore
and choose.

Hellban in: 5... 4..

