Finding balance by force is still finding balance

Those of you who’ve been reading this here blog for any length of time know that a common theme/expressed desire on this blog is for balance. Balance between work and home. Balance between research, teaching, and service. Balance between “should dos” and “want to dos”. When making resolutions at the start of academic years, or selecting themes at the start of calendar years, “balance” tops the list. Yet I’d give myself, oh, an F– if I had to grade how well I’ve actually done at achieving balance in my work life, my home life, or the intersection between the two, particularly since earning tenure.

Sometimes you need the universe to give you a nice swift kick in the pants to remind you of your true priorities.

In February 2010, my husband and I applied to become adoptive parents through the Korea program at a local agency. Adoption is not for the faint of heart, and for a control freak like myself it’s really the definition of hell. There are timelines, but they are wide-ranging (i.e., you may get matched with a child sometime in the next 6-12 months, you will travel to meet your child in the next 2-10 months) and constantly changing (i.e., that 2-10 month wait to travel is now 13-14 months and rising). You have to be adaptive, and patient, and more patient, and then even more patient. There are intense periods where you have to hand in about 100 pieces of paperwork, half of them notarized, in the next 24 hours, and then months of waiting for something to happen. You can try to plan, but realistically your only plan is to be prepared to throw your plans out and start over.

We knew all this going in. We made our best guesses. We were right about when we would be matched with our son (Dec 2010, 6 months after we completed our home study, almost to the day). We were told that we were sure to travel to meet and bring home our son in February 2012.

I dutifully applied for leave during spring term 2012 and planned my winter term 2012 teaching schedule so that colleagues could easily step in and finish the term for me if need be. I accepted some (too many) service commitments that would be winding down in December 2011/January 2012. I think I felt a bit guilty for “taking time off” to spend time with the new kiddo, and attempted to overcompensate by overcommitting myself until he came home. Which meant I spent a good portion of last year working overtime, stressed and miserable and with my life way out of balance, trying desperately to meet all of my responsibilities.

Then, in October, we learned that our adoption date was moving up…by several months. And I was forced to prioritize. I had to make very quick decisions about what stayed and what went. I triaged almost everything except teaching and a couple of non-negotiable (and fast-looming) research and service deadlines. I changed my leave and my teaching schedule. I came up with plans A, B, C, and D in case the call to travel to Korea came before fall term ended.

Even though I had spent months worrying about my responsibilities to everyone else, I was surprised at how easily I was able to shed all of that out of necessity. The universe had sent a reminder, loud and clear. This little boy we had committed to a year ago was coming home, and that was the only thing that mattered. Everything else could, and indeed must, be delegated.

Eight weeks after that October phone call, we finally received our son’s visa, and less than 48 hours later were on a plane to Korea to meet and bring home our son. We’ve been home for a week and I’ve yet to check my work email (sorry, colleagues!). My son is my top priority for the immediate future, as he should be.

I hope I can remember this lesson the next time my life starts to get out of whack, or the next time someone asks to add something to my already full plate. I’ve finally achieved balance of a sort, although the mechanism was admittedly a bit extreme. I am not keen to give it up. My resolution for 2012 and beyond is to remember what’s truly important and truly a priority, and structure my life and my work accordingly. I hope I am up to the challenge.

The most effective course evaluation question ever

There are always a few students in my courses each term who come to me at some point during the term unhappy with their progress. Invariably they ask me for tips on how they can succeed in the course. Towards the end of one particular term, when it seemed like I was fielding the question more and more often, I had the crazy idea to turn the question around and ask the students for their ideas. So I posed the following question on the intro course evaluation*:

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone taking this course in the future on how to succeed in the course?

I also indicated that I’d like to share their advice with future students, and to let me know if they were not comfortable with that. (Most gave me permission to use their advice.)

Some of it was the advice I typically give to students—read the text, try the problems, seek out the lab assistants, read next to the computer so you can try things out. Some of it indicated a desire for better study habits—”start the assignments early!”, “start studying for the quizzes earlier”.  Some of it indicated issues with the course structure or with particular assignments—alluding to instructions that were too vague, or assignments that took too long, and how to cope with those. And some of it indicated things—concepts, skills, life lessons—that the students were particularly proud to have mastered as a result of the course.

It was these last two areas that threw me. From this simple question, I could tell at a glance exactly what the students struggled with, whether conceptually or skills-wise or study habits-wise. I could tell what made them proud and in what areas they felt they’d grown the most.

Sometimes, I discovered, it was easier for them to indicate how the course worked for them if I asked them indirectly.

I’ve used this question in every single course since then, from intros to upper-level courses, and it is hands-down the most useful question on the evaluation for me. Sometimes the answers make me laugh. Always, the answers make me think. When I take my end-of-term notes and file them away with the course files until the next time I teach the course, it’s from this question that I take the most notes. I also, as threatened promised, do include the advice on future syllabi, so that students at the start of the term can get a better sense of what they’re in for, what are the potential sticky points and trouble spots, and most importantly, what rewards potentially await them at the end.

(Plus, for some reason they’re more likely to follow a peer’s advice to “try the problems in the text” than they are to listen to me say the same thing. Peer mentoring is powerful, even when it’s done via a few lines on a course syllabus as a voice from the past.)

What course evaluation questions have you found most useful, whether as an instructor (or, on the other side of the desk, as a student, to help you process and reflect on your own course learning)?

* Here are Carleton, we are fortunate (or cursed, depending on your mindset and where you are in the tenure stream) to have no  official, formal course evaluation forms. Course evaluations are entirely optional and, if used, must be developed, administered, and processed by the instructor. No one other than the instructor sees them (unless, of course, you share them with others, which I found immensely valuable pre-tenure).

Five (academic) things I’m thankful for

It’s 2:30pm the day before Thanksgiving, and about 20 minutes ago my brain decided that we were done working for the day. So before I sign off for a long weekend of low-key relaxation (and football! and running! and Christmas decorating!) with my two favorite people in the world, I wanted to reflect on five academically-related things for which I am thankful this holiday season.

1. My students. I’ve spent the past few hours writing recommendation letters, and the exercise reminded me of just how amazing our students are. Sure, sometimes they drive you batty, but I can truly and honestly say that I love my students. They are so sharp, so smart, and so engaged (ok, maybe less so during weeks 9 and 10 of the term). It is a joy to teach them and to work with them, and I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to teach at a school like Carleton.
2. My colleagues. I am fortunate to work in a great department. We don’t always agree, but we listen and learn from each other. We work on making each others’ lives easier; we step in and pitch in. When I had to switch my upcoming leave from Spring to Winter at the last minute (see below), my chair and the rest of my department went into overdrive to help me figure out the logistics. I can go to any of them for advice or commiseration without fear of judgement. (Having tenure helps, but still.) They make my work life fun.
3. My research. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned her before, I am passionate about my research. I’ve worked on my current project for almost 10 years now, in various forms, and it still excites me. There are still so many questions left to answer! And I truly and honestly believe what I am doing has the potential to be life-changing (or at least paradigm-changing), which fuels my passion. I am thankful that my job gives me the space and the freedom to explore the questions that motivate me, without question and without oversight.
4. A term’s leave. I’ve had a pretty busy year, to put it mildly. My students started working in my lab this summer the day after Spring Term ended (before I had started grading my finals!), and we went pretty much right from the summer research time into a very busy fall term (with the dyad and various other service projects on tap). So it’s been about a year since I had a proper break. I was scheduled for a leave during Spring term, but due to some things going on in my personal life (more on that in a later post), I will be on leave next term instead. I’ll still be plenty busy, but this is the right time for a break in the routine and some time away from Carleton to refresh and rejuvenate before Spring term. I’m thankful that I have a job that’s flexible enough to allow me that much-needed time away.
5. My mentors, sponsors, and cheerleaders. My recent trip to Grace Hopper reminded me of how energizing and powerful an effective support network can be. I’m grateful for all those in my life, inside and outside of my institution, who listen without judgement, offer advice, open doors, and open my eyes. I have some great people in my network and I would definitely not be where I am today without their support, encouragement, and facilitation.

I hope all of my US readers have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Owning my seniority

When I got the invitation a few months ago to attend the Senior Women Summit at Grace Hopper, I’ll admit that my first reaction was disbelief. Surely there was some mistake! I’ve only been officially tenured for just over a year, so how could I possibly be a senior woman in tech? And besides, doesn’t “senior” imply that I’m accomplished, that I’ve done something Really Important in my career? I’m just a lowly associate prof! I haven’t really done anything important yet!

But I was intrigued and curious, and thought “What the hell, I’ll just go and see what this is all about.”

I spent the entire first hour or so of today’s summit dealing with a serious case of impostor syndrome. I ended up sitting at a table of women who are very senior and are very much powerhouses of accomplishment. By chance I’d met all but one of them before. Oddly, even the ones I’d only briefly met in the past remembered me, which really threw me for a loop—why would these powerful women, who meet lots of people every day, remember little old me? They were all very warm and welcoming, but I was seriously fighting the urge to run out of the room screaming “I don’t belong here! There’s been a horrible mistake!”

Eventually I was able to get over my impostor syndrome enough to relax. And it was a really incredible opportunity. I had some great conversations with senior women, I identified some new mentors potential sponsors, and got to meet and converse with some of my personal heroes.

I find it interesting that I have such a hard time “owning” the fact that I am a senior woman. What I realized today is that, like it or not, I do have experience and I do make a difference and that others do see me as senior. This means that I have some power and control over things in my department, institution, and larger technical community. And that I can and should capitalize on this to make the changes and impact I want to see to my department, institution, and larger technical community. I forget sometimes that I’ve finished fighting the tenure battle—I still think of myself as “junior” and “of limited power”. It’s hard to switch that off once you get tenure. It’s hard to lean into and embrace that new role.

Today’s summit gave me permission to own my seniority and to embrace the benefits and responsibilities that come with that. My challenge will be figuring out how exactly I want to translate that into meaningful and sustainable action.

“Should cover” vs. “have to cover”: making the tough decisions

It’s Week 9 here at Carleton, which means the term is winding down. Students are frantic and frazzled. Faculty are just as, if not more, frantic and frazzled, because we’re at that point in the term where we realize that the ambitious syllabi we laid out so carefully in September is, in fact, too ambitious.

Actually this time around I find myself in the interesting position that I am right on schedule. I’ve covered almost everything I intended on covering, to a comfortable level of depth. I have 2 classes left in each of my courses. (I’m heading to Grace Hopper tomorrow, so I will miss 2 teaching days. I just canceled class outright for my upper-level elective to give them time to work on their projects, which are due the last day of class. My Intro class will be capably handled by my dyad partner and my prefect.) Intro’s all set: presentations next Monday and exam/wrap up next Wednesday. But in my upper-level class, I find myself with some room to maneuver.

There is one technical topic that I could conceivably cover: an additional day on wireless networks and mobility. You could argue that this is information that my students need to see, since so much networking is mobile these days. In my younger professorial days, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you, spent a class cramming as much technical info in as possible….and exhausting myself and my students in the process.

But. In the course of the term, through the readings and discussions and tangents we’ve taken in class, I’ve realized that my class as a whole is really, really interested in network policy. Nothing seems to interest my students more than a good story about how a particular technology evolved (or didn’t). Mention “net neutrality” or “peering agreements” and everyone’s ears perk up. This pleases me, because it means they’re making connections beyond the technical to the practical, and really grasping that technology doesn’t happen in a bubble. And in fact, when we talk about the Internet, we’re talking about a technology that has fundamentally changed the way we do, well, almost everything (and changed this on a miniscule timescale, relatively). And I’d be a fool if I didn’t capitalize on this opportunity and give my students additional space to explore the intersection between technology and policy and how the two affect each other.

So I’m cutting out technical content and dedicating the last 2 class meetings solely to policy issues as they relate to computer networking. We’ll debate net neutrality. We’ll use the opportunity to revisit the end-to-end argument and the layered model and other long-held tenets of networking, and argue over whether they still (should) hold. We’ll agonize over whether we should trash the whole Internet and start over from scratch. Hopefully we’ll strongly disagree with each other.

In the end, I have no doubt that my students will come away with a much richer understanding of all of the technical stuff we’ve covered all term. And hey, if they do need to know more about wireless networks and mobility….well, I’ll just have to trust that I’ve taught them how to learn about networks, and let them figure that stuff out on their own.

Adventures in interdisciplinary teaching

Several years ago, a good friend and colleague, who’s in the Psychology department, and I were talking about our mutual interest in human-computer interaction (HCI). Neither of us works in that field, but both of us wanted to explore the field beyond just a surface interest. We should team-teach a class in HCI, we joked. That would be our excuse to finally learn a bit more about it!

Fast forward to Fall Term 2011, and, well, we essentially got our wish!

After about four years of brainstorming, planning, talking to various deans and experts, cajoling our departments, tweaking and retweaking (and retweaking, and throwing out and starting over) ideas and course models and syllabi, my Psychology colleague and I are teaching a first-year dyad. For those not at Carleton, a dyad is a set of two courses, one of which is a freshman seminar (or Argument and Inquiry (A&I) seminar, as we call them around here). The two courses address a single topic or theme from the perspective of two different disciplines. The same students are enrolled on both courses. Our dyad links an A&I seminar on Psychology, Technology, and Design with a special topics section of Intro CS on human-centered computing, which counts for the CS major just as a regular Intro CS course would.

Typically, dyads are loosely linked, but from the start we decided that we wanted to tightly integrate our courses. As our vision for the course evolved, we decided that it was important for our students to work on a series of projects directly linking the two disciplines of psychology and computer science. In order to do this effectively, we decided that our classes should meet in consecutive periods, and that on Fridays we would team-teach “lab” sessions spanning both class periods, in which the students would work on these integrated projects. We also developed our syllabi together (literally—we often sat in the same room and worked on them simultaneously over the summer), and as much as possible try to cover similar and/or related topics at the same time in both courses.

We also determined, as our vision for the course evolved, that it was important for these projects to have a service learning component. To that end, we partnered with our IT department to identify appropriately-scoped projects for first year students in their first term at Carleton (no small feat!). The IT folks were very receptive and supportive, and we’ve worked extensively with two in particular to identify two web interface/functionality redesign projects—one involving a wiki, the other involving Moodle, our course management system. These IT people come in at the beginning of a project to orient our students to the site and its current functionality, and also will come in at the end of the project as our students present their redesigns. The first project, the wiki redesign, is finishing up, and our students will be presenting their proposed redesigns to the IT department on Monday.

We are four weeks into the course now, and the course is going even better than we envisioned. We worried before the term started about the “flow” between the two courses and about how the lab sessions would actually work in practice. Both of these have gone rather well—we’re particularly proud of how well the lab sessions have gone so far and how much work our students have been able to accomplish, given their still fairly limited programming skills and knowledge of HCI and software design. We have an awesome teaching assistant (“prefect”) for the CS course who’s a psychology major, and he’s been a tremendous resource for the students for both halves of the course. And, best of all, my colleague and I are still on speaking terms!

An unexpected bonus is getting to witness, first hand, another colleague’s teaching style. For all the talking and thinking we do at Carleton about teaching and learning, the truth is we know precious little about what our colleagues actually do in the classroom, how they interact with their students, how they approach the material, etc. Getting to see a colleague in action up close and personal has been a real gift.

I worried, because I’m “losing” a class meeting each week to the lab session, that the students would struggle to keep up with the faster pace of the CS half of the course, but they’ve been doing tremendously well in that area as well. The first real blip happened on Wednesday, when I introduced lists, but in my experience all of my students have initially struggled with the concept and reality of lists, so we’re right on track there.

The biggest challenge on the CS side has been language. Because we wanted the CS course to count as an Intro CS course, and thus the department expects students coming out of the course to know Python, I am having the students use Python to create web site mockups and mimic web site functionality, where another language like PHP or Javascript might be more appropriate. The language choice limits what we can do—for instance, the students can’t change any of the actual code, or create scripts for the sites—and has somewhat shaped what we’re asking the students to do in the projects, but so far we’ve been able to make it work, even with Python’s limited graphics capabilities.

As we move into the second half of the term, it will be interesting to see how the two courses evolve, together and separately. So far, we haven’t faced too many unforeseen challenges. Will more challenges pop up as we move through the course? Will the second project be as successful as the first? Have we over- or underestimated our students’ capabilities? Stay tuned!

Five mistakes I always make the first day back at school

1. Wearing heels. I don’t care if it’s the most comfortable pair of heels I own, or if I can normally spend hours and hours on my feet in them. After a summer of wearing nothing but sandals and flip-flops, any “real” shoes mean P A I N . And with opening convocation later and the reception afterwards…well, there’s a lot of standing around. Ouchie.
2. Packing too little food. I don’t know what it is about getting back into teaching, but those first couple of weeks I am constantly ravenous. Today I ate my lunch at 10:30am and was starving by noon. I am on my second post-lunch snack now.
3. Planning 70 minutes of material for a 50 minute class. 50 minutes goes by so fast. I always overplan.
4. Planning on doing substantive work on my own the first day. Teaching is exhausting. The first day back, I am brain dead when I’m not in front of the class. I actually have “do paper revisions” on my to-do list today. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.
5. Forgetting how much I’ve missed teaching over the summer. I enjoy the time away from the classroom during the summer, the less-structured time to think and plan. But…when I get back in front of the students the first day, the adrenaline and excitement kick in and I remember all the reasons I love this job so much.

5 things that helped me survive summer, 2011 edition

At the end of the past two summers, ProfHacker’s contributors all posted on 5 things (technologies, activities, foods, etc) that got them through the summer; their 2011 lists were just posted. Last summer I did the same. So, continuing that tradition (can it be a tradition after only 2 years?), here are the 5 things that helped me survive the summer of 2011.

1. Evernote. Oh Evernote, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Seriously, Evernote has become my favorite and most indispensable tool. I keep my meeting notes there. I keep my checklists and to-do lists for my various projects there. If I have a thought I want to follow up on later, or a paper I need to track down, or a teaching idea I’d like to research, or a link I don’t have time to read…I just make a note and tag it. Evernote syncs to all my computers and to my phone, so I can access these things everywhere. I also use it for non-school stuff too, like recipes or notes on future trips or contact info of people I meet. I. Love. Evernote!
2. Checklists. I am waaaaaaay overcommitted right now. I have various research and service and teaching projects in various stages of (un)done-ness. Keeping track of everything was stressing me out big time earlier this summer. In a fit of frustration one day, when I was so paralyzed I couldn’t get anything done, I started a master checklist. I have a note in Evernote (of course) called “Next steps on various tasks”, with a section for each project and at most 4 “next things” to do on those projects. When I feel stuck or overwhelmed or not sure what to work on next, I open up the list, pick something, and go. Keeping the older tasks, checked off, on the list also helps me see how much I’ve done this summer, which helps the psyche.
3. Google Docs. This made the list last year too, but it’s really an indispensable part of my workflow. My research students kept personal lab notebooks on there, and we kept a group “lab notebook” as well. It’s once again helped my collaborations immensely, particularly the development of a set of linked courses with a colleague. This summer it’s allowed us to share and collaborate on our linked syllabi, develop rubrics, and keep track of meeting notes with various support staff. We’d not be half as organized if not for Google Docs!
4. Cold-press coffee/home-brewed iced tea. At the end of last summer, I learned how to make cold press coffee in my french press. I am now seriously addicted to the stuff. (Decaf, since caffeine gives me migraines.)  A few years ago I also figured out how to brew my own iced tea from regular tea bags, which tastes so much better than the special iced tea bags. This sounds trivial, I realize, but a good tall glass of homemade iced coffee or iced tea makes me happy, and is like a mini-treat every day. Since I haven’t had a break since school started back in January, any little thing that feels like a little break in my day makes things better.
5. Running. I ran my first ever half marathon this summer. I’ve been a runner for a while, but the longest race I’ve done before this was 4 miles. I discovered that I absolutely love distance running. I looked forward to my long runs on weekends all week long. Training forced me to take time for myself (which I have a hard time doing) and to focus on something other than my job (which I also have a hard time doing). It also taught me to be more patient (building up mileage slowly) and flexible (sometimes your run is not going to go the way you expected, and you have to deal with that). Running the race and crossing the finish line (and recording a faster time than my target!) was the high point of my summer, and I’m still buzzing from the experience! Best of all, I stayed injury-free.

Honorable mentions include yoga, being part of a CSA, awesome undergrad research students, and a super support system of friends and family.

What helped you survive the summer?

The 5 Stages of Conference Paper Writing

(with apologies to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)

1. Denial.  This is going to be the best paper we’ve ever written! It’ll be paradigm-changing and highly cited! The data is so awesome it’s going to be a breeze to write! We totally have enough time to whip this into shape and send it out.

2. Anger.  What do you mean, we made a mistake in the experiments and now the data is not as conclusive? There’s no way we can spin this positively! This intro reads like it was written by drunken monkeys! We’re how many pages over the limit? And why is it that I just removed 2 whole paragraphs of text in LaTeX, but our page count just went up? Gah!

3. Bargaining. Ok, if we combine Figures 2 and 3 into one figure, we can gain back 2 lines of text. And if we cite Author X that’s kind of like citing Authors Y and Z, so we don’t actually have to include all three citations, so that gains us 6 lines of text. Which means now we’re…still 1 page over the limit. Let’s try cutting one sentence from each paragraph…Do we really need a conclusion? I mean, no one ever reads them anyway…

4. Depression. There is no. way. we’re going to make this page limit. We’ve already cut this paper to the bone and we’re still half a page over the limit. If we triage any more of this paper, we’re going to lose some content and context, and then the reviewers will ding us for not including the context and content.  And this intro still reads like it was written by drunken monkeys. We are the worst researchers ever.

5. Acceptance.  Wait, did we just make the page limit? Submit it now! No no no, whatever you do DON’T re-read it. I don’t care if it makes sense or not anymore, page limit met = done.

The importance of language and framing, part eleventy-thousand

There’s a fascinating blog post up today called “Girls Go Geek…Again” by Anna Lewis at Fog Creek Software. The post is wide-ranging and starts off by talking about the decline of women in computing since the mid-1980s:

In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s, during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.

In fact, for a hot second back in the mid-sixties, computer programming was actually portrayed as women’s work by the mass media.

The post links to a Cosmo article from 1967 (including an awesome quote from Grace Hopper about how programming is similar to planning a dinner party), which implies that of course women are natural programmers—why wouldn’t they be?

Then, The Great Migration out occurred (emphasis mine):

There were many reasons for the unusual influx of women into computer science. …There was a tremendous need to hire anyone with aptitude, including women. Partly, it was the fact that programming work itself was not yet fully defined as a scientific or engineering field. …

From 1984 to 2006, the number of women majoring in computer science dropped from 37% to 20% — just as the percentages of women were increasing steadily in all other fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, with the possible exception of physics. The reasons women left computer science are as complex and numerous as why they had entered in the first place. But the most common explanation is that the rise of personal computers led computing culture to be associated with the stereotype of the eccentric, antisocial, male “hacker.” Women found computer science less receptive professionally than it had been at its inception.

I’ve heard Fran Allen say similar things in the past—and, at today’s lunch for our research scholars, our speaker said something along the same lines when talking about educational technology. Once the requirements for what it meant to be a computer scientist became more “formalized” and once CS became more closely tied to engineering, suddenly it didn’t seem quite so welcoming anymore.

As interesting as the first part of this article is, the second part is equally fascinating. The blogger interviews the only female intern at Fog Creek (who, apparently, is the only technical woman on staff too!) about her experiences as a woman in CS. While the entire interview is interesting, I want to highlight two things in particular that Leah Hanson, the intern, said.

In answering the question “Why do you think younger girls or college-age women don’t go into computer science?”, she says (again, emphasis mine):

Well, I used to be baffled at how they could miss seeing how awesome programming and CS in general are, but there’s a bunch of things that seem to contribute to that. For example, women seem to give up sooner even in everyday situations with technology….Having experience with going through the frustration of trying to get some piece of technology to work, and eventually succeeding, builds skills that you need for working with technology and for debugging. Also, most girls don’t really get computers of their own when they’re young. It seems like sometimes the family computer is bought mainly for the boy to use and then he’s kind of forced to share it with his sister. That means that girls can’t experiment on computers. You need your own computer because you have to be able to possibly break it while you’re trying new stuff, without getting in trouble. …Until I had complete control of my own computer, I never had any interest in trying Linux; when someone else is responsible for keeping your computer functioning, and does a good job of it, there’s little incentive to try something like a different OS, since you’d have to convince other people that it’s a good idea to mess with what’s currently working.

This perfectly echoes the arguments in Unlocking the Clubhouse as well: women and men need the experience of tinkering so that they can get into the mindset needed for writing and debugging computer programs. Men are more likely to get the opportunity to do so. By making it socially acceptable for women to not be troubleshooters and problem-solvers of their own technology, we essentially shut off career paths to them.

And in answering the question of how Fog Creek can do a better job attracting and recruiting technical women (emphasis mine):

Well, one thing I noticed is that on your website you really stress how the developers here are the best and all the perks that you offer. But, to be honest, that doesn’t really differentiate Fog Creek from Google or Facebook because they also have awesome developers and loads of perks. Whereas what I think your internship offers that you don’t stress quite as much is all the close mentorship we get….And, basically, these things that have to do with collaboration and learning appeal a lot more to female candidates than talking about the best developers in the world or all the perks. I went to a talk at Johns Hopkins, hosted by our Women in CS group, by Hannah Wallach on gender imbalance among FLOSS developers. And she said that one of the things that happens is that women don’t even think they’re qualified for something because it’s advertised in competitive language. The language of competition not only doesn’t appeal to many women, it actually puts them off. Google advertises their Summer of Code with very competitive language. In 2006, GNOME received almost two hundred GSoC applicants – all male. When GNOME advertised an identical program for women, but emphasizing the opportunities for mentorship and learning, they received over a hundred highly qualified female applicants for the three spots they were able to fund. Honestly, when you hear the phrase “the world’s best developers,” you see a guy. And, for women, that can be alienating.

Framing matters. Language matters. We can be as inclusive and aware and welcoming as possible, but if we’re not paying attention to the language we use—on our web sites, in our course descriptions, in how we talk about technology and its role in the world—we may end up shooting ourselves in the foot.

We’re at an interesting point right now: enrollments in CS are on the rise, and more women are choosing to major in CS. We have a golden opportunity to learn from our mistakes of the past and keep the trends moving upward. Let’s hope we’re smart enough to not let history repeat itself.