“Pushing Women and People of Color Out of Science Before We Go In”
“I am a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a materials engineer, an honors student, and a woman. I also have been told hundreds of times that I don’t deserve to be where I am. MIT admissions decisions come out on 3/14 (for Pi) every year. By 8 a.m. on 3/15 everyone in my high school knew I had been accepted. Tons of people came up to congratulate that day and afterwards but seemed strangely insistent on reminding me that “it is a lot easier to get in when you are a girl because they get so many fewer female applicants.””
I feel this so much. Someone recently told me that I was sure to get a fellowship I am applying for “because of demographics”. He knows this because, when he applied, two different women he knew got it instead of him. And one of them was Cuban, so…
And it’s so, so shitty because it makes me not want the fellowship, because that will just confirm this guy’s perspective on life. His comment has now inserted his sexism and racism into my experience of applying for and wanting to get this fellowship, he is part of my feelings about something that is important to me, and he does not at all deserve to be.
I also just don’t want to have to develop ‘thick skin’, I don’t want to have to be distant and uncaring with people, I don’t want to have to be prepared to hold myself apart from the communities around me. I don’t like that I was prepared to hear him say that because it’s something I worry about people saying and so I knew what to do. I wish I could have reacted with confusion instead of exhaustion.
