Have you ever gone to a lecture and suddenly felt like you accidentally ended up in a freaky episode of The Walking Dead except all the zombies are men and you’re the one surviving female human? Then you’re probably an engineering student. Only about 20% of all engineering students are women and that definitely comes with some struggles. No other girl friends to gossip with during a boring class, professors underestimating you just because you aren’t one of the boys, and just the basic stresses of studying in one of the hardest fields out there. Luckily, we “lady engineers” have gotten together and created some amazing organizations to prove that we are strong, fierce, confident, and smart as hell, but we still have to deal with a few of these daily struggles.
1. Being able to count on one hand the amount of girls in your 100+ person lecture.
It’s always fun to walk into your first class of the semester and be surrounded mostly by men. But we don’t let this discourage us and continue to work hard to become some of the world’s next best engineers.
2. Having everyone assume you’re a socially awkward math geek when you tell them your major.
Okay, fine. Maybe it’s a little true.
3. Encouraging all of your little sisters, cousins, and nieces to love math and science.
Statistics show that there is no difference in interest in STEM subjects between boys and girls until high school. It can’t hurt for young girls to have their big sisters, cousins, or aunts encouraging them to keep loving math and science.
4. The “stayed up doing 8 hours of algorithms homework last night” look.
Some people refer to this as the “basic white girl” look, but after staying up all night working on this week’s nearly impossible problem set, leggings and iced coffee are practically a requirement.
5. Trying to make those neon orange UConn School of Engineering shirts look cute.
Honestly, who picked that color?! As if it wasn’t bad enough that everyone already assumes we’re awkward and introverted, now we can look like human traffic cones too.
6. When it comes to finding love in class, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
When the female-to-male ratio in all your classes is 1 to 25, you’d think that there would be plenty of potential suitors, but most of these suitors are only interested in video games, coding, and Reddit.
7. Having to put in that extra effort to prove to professors and group project members that you’re just as competent as the boys.
One of the main reasons cited for fewer women in STEM fields is a lack of confidence. Many of these insecurities come from having to work that much harder to prove that we are just as capable at being great engineers as the boys are.
8. The face of pure shock when you read these statistics about women in STEM.
Only 19.3% of engineering students and 17.9% of computer science students today are women. Once we hit the workforce, the statistics get even worse with women making up only 15% of all professional engineers.
9. Not being able to study abroad because you can’t afford to miss a semester full of engineering requirements.
There’s nothing like the FOMO you feel when your entire Instagram is full of posts from your friends in every country imaginable, but for most engineering students, studying abroad means sacrificing graduating on time.
10. Finding refuge from all the boys at one of the campus organizations geared towards female engineers.
Luckily, there are some great organizations on campus for women who are engineering students. SWE is a nationwide organization that aims to inspire young women to pursue careers in engineering. Phi Sigma Rho is a sorority for women in engineering here at UConn and the WiMSE club provides a community for women to learn and grow together.