I'm a college freshman right now, and I have a few reasons I haven't leapt into computer science. The biggest and hairiest of these is that I have simply not had enough education in math/logic to be able to look at a CS career as a viable option. My teachers have, over the years, been either terrible or supremely unhelpful. I tried to get A+ certification in high school and ended up leaving the program because the teachers simply would not, or could not, help me understand the material, no matter how many different times I asked, no matter how many different ways I asked.
I am, unfortunately, not one of those types who is able to intuit my way through programs, to learn from reading a book, or to have something tossed brusquely at me and be able to parse it. I'm not sure where the fall-through has been over the years of my education, but my math and logic courses in my schools have been repeatedly incomprehensible in the way that they were presented, both to me and to many of the other girls around me. The thing is, when I got a tutor who spoke my language, the material was lots of fun. I really enjoy math/logic/programming when I get it, but the language used to teach it (and the base skills of years before, in elementary, middle, and high school) has been confusing. The feeling of frustration when I am sitting in a class and knowing that if the teacher (who has always been a 'he' save twice in my student career) explained it a little differently, I would be getting it instead of sitting there feeling like I was beating my head against a wall... it's terrible to sit there for an entire semester not understanding, and knowing that if it was explained a different way, you COULD.
So, like I said in the beginning, I'm afraid that if I take CS now (unable to afford a tutor anymore), I will have that same experience of just not being able to get it, the way that it's explained. I'm sick of feeling futile and frustrated and looked down upon. CS is interesting, but it's just not worth the furious struggle that it would take to become a fluent professional for me. I don't know how many other girls share my experience, but I suspect that there's more than one out there... it starts at an elementary school level, folks, not at a college one.
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I'm a college freshman right now, and I have a few reasons I haven't leapt into computer science. The biggest and hairiest of these is that I have simply not had enough education in math/logic to be able to look at a CS career as a viable option. My teachers have, over the years, been either terrible or supremely unhelpful. I tried to get A+ certification in high school and ended up leaving the program because the teachers simply would not, or could not, help me understand the material, no matter how many different times I asked, no matter how many different ways I asked.
I am, unfortunately, not one of those types who is able to intuit my way through programs, to learn from reading a book, or to have something tossed brusquely at me and be able to parse it. I'm not sure where the fall-through has been over the years of my education, but my math and logic courses in my schools have been repeatedly incomprehensible in the way that they were presented, both to me and to many of the other girls around me. The thing is, when I got a tutor who spoke my language, the material was lots of fun. I really enjoy math/logic/programming when I get it, but the language used to teach it (and the base skills of years before, in elementary, middle, and high school) has been confusing. The feeling of frustration when I am sitting in a class and knowing that if the teacher (who has always been a 'he' save twice in my student career) explained it a little differently, I would be getting it instead of sitting there feeling like I was beating my head against a wall... it's terrible to sit there for an entire semester not understanding, and knowing that if it was explained a different way, you COULD.
So, like I said in the beginning, I'm afraid that if I take CS now (unable to afford a tutor anymore), I will have that same experience of just not being able to get it, the way that it's explained. I'm sick of feeling futile and frustrated and looked down upon. CS is interesting, but it's just not worth the furious struggle that it would take to become a fluent professional for me. I don't know how many other girls share my experience, but I suspect that there's more than one out there... it starts at an elementary school level, folks, not at a college one.