Role Models

Last summer I worked in a mathematics program for gifted high school students run by the University of Chicago Department of Mathematics and once all of the courses in need of tutoring ended I wrote a somewhat unhappy post about the girls in the program that I had observed. In the post I offer some anecdotal evidence and talk about the common stereotypes that women face in male dominated fields. At the end I mention the name Kim Kardashian popping up in some early morning small talk and conclude that the she might not be the best role model for 9th graders attempting to tackle group theory. In retrospect, it is a frustrated piece at best and I wish I didn't take that last stab at Kim since she seems to get more than a fair share of negative attention on the Internet and I really don't think anyone should be featured in endless collages and compilations of their own face while crying. The question of role models seems to be one of the most commonly cited ideas in relation to the gender distribution in STEM fields and possibly calls for a more serious discussion. A friend has recently pointed out a CS encouragement program at Stanford dubbed She++ that seems to be rather polished and possibly successful. A very superficial skimming of some of the personal statements of the leadership team brings up the question of  the "lack of concrete role models- that is, the lack of individuals whom we can point to and say, 'Look, if you pursue technology, you could be her someday.' " thus emphasizing the importance of this idea not just for people studying the STEM field but also students and others directly involved in its furthering and development. Another piece of somewhat anecdotal evidence comes from my on experience of participating in the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics for the Midwestern region earlier this year. A variety of female speakers at this conference were presented as both successful academics and more general, life-wise, role models. It was an interesting albeit somewhat disappointing experience and the previously mentioned distinction is something that seems worth thinking about in the context of similar organizations and conferences.

Having gone to the Midwestern rendition of CUWiP with a pretty large group of University of Chicago girls including my best friend I admit I was somewhat predispositioned to approach everything with a healthy dose of criticism due to the relaxed and somewhat coherent atmosphere in our group. My best friend being one of the few other girls interested in condensed matter physics of some variety, we were somewhat surprised to find that possibly the biggest disappointment came from the strictly academic part of the conference that mostly offered high energy and particle physics talks. This objection that could possibly be seen as silly unfortunately proved to be indicative of most problems our group ended up identifying during the three days of talks, panels and presentations. Simply put, the academic content relevant for most of the speakers was pushed in the background and we learned more about solving the "two body problem" (how to survive academia with a partner) than actual physics.

(I'm somewhere in this picture, I promise)

This experience seems to directly relate to the issue of providing and possibly creating role models for young girls and women interested in STEM fields in any capacity. In particular, the distinction between being a "successful woman scientist" and being a "successful scientist" that happens to be a woman seems to be rather important in the context of providing idols for all of us prospective researchers and engineers. It seems rather dangerous to equip young women with a variety of psychological tricks, mantras and insights aimed at making interactions with their male counterparts easier and less intimidating without emphasizing a strong foundation of knowledge and scientific curiosity that will provide motivation even if there is no other gender to compete with. By establishing the role of a "woman scientist" women once again seem to be grouped into a category of their own thus diminishing the level of objectivity applied to the assessment of their work. The situation seems to be somewhat similar to the century old plight of a student convinced that a professor hates him - the best way to go about 'defeating' such a professor is to do so well that they can't complain about anything anymore. In a similar way, the women scientists taken up as role models should be primarily assessed based on their body of work instead of just being women that didn't give up on the field dominated by what suddenly seem to be "big bad men". A direct consequence of this approach is also that the chosen role model is given just a little more dignity by knowing that it is their raw skill that is worth the admiration rather than their take on balancing a lab job and an equally demanding husband.

Of course, one has to point out that the argument that is presented here should not be perceived as black and white and I personally don't want to be dismissive of any efforts to attract or even empower more women in terms of their involvement with the STEM fields. In the same way that the women of the she++ mentioned above are aware of the fact that women in CS need to be treated "the same as everyone else. If you wouldn’t have given a guy the offer, don’t give the girl the offer, because that just belittles what we’re trying to do." one should also try to be aware of the fact that the motivation for taking up a mentor or choosing a specification should still be mostly academic. By empowering girls in terms of academic skills, problem solving methods and such their succes would be increased as much as it is by building their self-confidence. In an ideal world "scientist" wouldn't be a term with a strong gender connotation and it would be great to see girl specific programs address that in their presentation of proposed role models.

Girls That Hate Girls

Ironically enough, I was originally introduced to riot grrrl through a male friend that loved and still loves Sleater Kinney. I had heard of Sleater Kinney before because they had performed with Pearl Jam, a band that another friend loved, but never really looked into them until half of their discography was shoved into my face (and I mean that in the best way possible). Through the powers of Google I soon discovered Bikini Kill and got enchanted with the movement as much as with Kathleen Hanna’s raw shrieks of anger. To quite an extent, riot grrrl is all about girl love and inclusion. The third and fourth waves of feminism were all about inclusion and girl love and the question of girls and women sticking together and being sisters instead of competitors or enemies is still a relevant one. The emphasis on friendships between girls has spilled into popular culture and we are more often than not subjected to shows, movies and even pop music centered around cliques, groups, duos, trios and whatever have you composed exclusively of girls. At the same time, the trope of a girl that only hangs out with boys, a girl that does not get along with other girls or even hates other girls has become a somewhat established inhabitant of the world wide web as much as the dreaded “real life”. Sometimes I think I am a border line case, declaring myself a “bro” as a joke as much as a choice and keeping mostly male company with the excuse of being committed to a heavily male dominated field. Despite definitely being some sort of a girly girl with my penchant for Polyvore, nail polish, cupcakes and all the pretty pictures one can dig up on Tumblr and, more importantly, a self proclaimed feminist looking up to that one girl that “holds her head up so high”, I have definitely heard myself state that it is hard to be friends with girls because they are catty or clingy or take everything too emotionally and so on. And even though I have one girlfriend that shares the strange list of interests ranging form condensed matter physics to holographic shoes, I often feel ashamed for more or less consciously participating in culture that bashed girls friendships. It is something of a fact that the worst kind of misogyny comes from the ranks of women themselves and I have always been mystified as to what has happened to those women to make them such. The idea of being that one girl that is implicitly better than the others by solely finding their company inadequate is equally bad.

The standard argument for why girls hate each other generally revolves around the idea of competition. Girls compete with each other to be the prettiest, the most popular, the most successful, the most desirable as an object of desire. Competitions tend to bring out the worst in people and since this idea of being better then the other girls is somehow ingrained in us from a very young age we seem to embrace it wholeheartedly. And while this is not an unreasonable argument it does not explain why hating your own gender is almost exclusively a female phenomenon. In fact, the idea of competition seems to significantly more prominent in the upbringing of boys who are often directly encouraged to be more aggressive than the other boys and always focus on winning. As has often been pointed out to me by male interlocutors, the culture that society forces upon men are mostly a culture of shame and disappointment over not being the most masculine or the strongest and therefore a loser in comparison to other men. As in the animal kingdom, the male of the species is supposed to beat his peers in order to be granted mating rights of some sorts. Competition is relevant to boys as much as it is relevant to girls and one will rarely come across a man claiming all other men to be inferior to women and in no way suitable for companionship or teamwork of any sort.

Lately, I have started to wonder how much of an influence on this phenomenon comes from popular culture. By asking that question I definitely do not want to deny that the aforementioned idea of competition or jealousy or even just personal insecurities highly play into the process of judging other girls as subjects of hate but the fact that our behavior is so telling of our environment and cultural influences is definitely a relevant one. Growing up in the world of Spice Girls, Sex and the City, Mean Girls and teenage magazines preparing the way for a Cosmopolitan subscription, it is definitely true that girls my age have been presented with a very particular idea of what female friendships are all about. The idea of women being clingy, catty or even bitchy is of course not something that was invented in the nineties and most likely a restatement of old, old gender stereotypes but what the TV shows and magazines of our youth have added to it is a sense of fun and glamour. The same way one was supposed to spend time with her girlfriends shopping at the mall, obsessing after shaving every sign of hair off of their body and idolizing boys, she was also supposed to have enemies or at least someone to dislike enough to make it a constant topic of conversation. Being friends with some girls has always been portrayed as not being friends with some other girls with no neutral or peaceful interpretation. The Mean Girls plot serves as a great caricature of this sentiment, so great that it served as an observation and a self-fulfilling prophecy at the same time. (Not to be mistaken, there are lessons to be learned from Mean Girls and as fun the movie is it does point in the right direction as far as all girl related things go)

 The other thing we have all learned from TV and movies is that girl friendships are always centered on objects, whether it be clothes or the prince charming that was often more of a cardboard cutout than anything else. As much as Sex and the City celebrated independent women confident in their sexuality that primarily cared about each other and always chose to find refuge among their fellow women rather than lovers or husbands, it made all of the women in question seem somewhat shallow in their chase after shoes and endless cocktail parties. It was conspicuous consumption feminism and it applied to a selected group. A self-vetting clique of rich white women Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte were the grown up versions of the cliques Tina Fey had created in Mean Girls. The Spice Girls thought us similar things. Even though their friendship took priority over men, it was still mostly based on glitter and sunshine. The expectation was therefore to always be like all of these women and girls and any teen magazine that you could have picked up (and I remember feeling inadequate because my mother refused to buy them for me) could advise you on behavior appropriate for you and your BFF. Having a BFF in itself meant adopting a certain stereotype and internalizing a certain code of conduct. Implicitly, you were promising to be a godmother to her children and get botox injections together once you hit sixty. Kristen Wiig’s character in Bridesmaids experienced this to some extent and bounced back like the real BFF should.

Smart girls, grungy girls, quirky girls and such were not included in the girl friendship stereotype for the longest time and one could at best hope for a girl underdog that will undergo a magical transformation into one of the pretty, popular girls and get the guy that we were all supposed to be lusting for. In that context, it is no wonder that it is relatively easy to find girls that claim to be to good to be friends with other girls. It is a remarkable ego boost to tell oneself they are genuinely better than the female-to-female interactions shown on popular culture and the ideas of how girls should feel about each other that are always pushed down our throats. It is sad that one can upgrade their self worth by denying a behavior supposedly characteristic to their gender but unfortunately popular culture has not embraced all aspects of female friendships. Rebelling against a traditional notion of BFFs and cliques therefore turns into girl hate in an ironic twist. Girls don’t hate other girls, they mostly hate what they were told girls and their friendships stand for.

Things to Love: Rock 'n' Roll High School

 As my vacation at home comes to an end and I will be back in Chicago in a little more than a week, I've been toying with the idea of writing something about Croatia but everything I could come up with was either way to personal or way to depressing or both. To break this spell of depressing topics and bad writing I decided to write up a post about something that is not only super fun but also something that I really like. If you are as upset about not being around in the 80s as I am, you should definitely check it out.

The original poster

 I would have probably missed the DocFilms (UChicago’s  very own cinema) screening of Rock’n’Roll Highschool  if someone hadn’t been brilliant enough to put up a poster in one of the math buildings advertising not only the movie but also a live performance from a local tribute band. At that point I had not listened to the Ramones for a fairly long time and seeing the bands’ caricatures made me think of times when I was 13 or 14 and still discovering the ridiculously wide spectrum of alternative music of the harder sort. I remember having a friend from the city over for an improvised summer vacation on the island where I live who was rather vocal about Joey Ramone sounding like a Greek person that learned how to speak English only a couple of days ago. I’m not quite so sure where she got that whole Greek thing but I will admit that I soon realized that the Ramones were miles away from being in any way refined and quite frankly forgot about them once I developed a taste for all the intricacies and music prodigies of heavy and all other sorts of metal. Watching Rock’n’Roll Highschool  up close, on the big screen where the more than moderate budget is rather obvious immediately dissolved all of my prejudice about the band and their music. For the sake of being at least semi-objective, I will admit that the plot is more than stereotypical, that some of the gags are fairly corny and that most of the movie is visually as tacky as it can be (and keep in mind, we’re talking 80s here). At the same time, it is brutally honest in what punk rock is about, the Ramones are definitely as genuine as they can be, the music is pretty excellent, and the whole thing is just ridiculously, albeit a little trashy, fun.

The plot is centered around Riff Randall, Kate Rambeau and Tom Roberts, three 1980 teenagers that attend Vince Lombardi High, a school notorious for pushing the patience and sanity of their many principals until they finally get hospitalized due to nervous breakdowns caused by students’ unwillingness to study and love for rock’n’roll music. The movie opens on the first day of school when a new principal, Ms Togar, is introduced and already gets into a conflict with Riff that has stolen a record player and taken over the school’s PA system, with a little help of her science genius friend Kate, and is blasting the Ramones so loudly that the desks are shaking and students dancing absolutely everywhere. We soon find out that Riff is madly in love with Joey Ramone and has written a song for the band, titled “Rock’n’Roll Highschool” while Kate has decided to enter into a contract with the king of the school underground services, Eaglebauer, to get a chance to go out with Tom who happens to be the star of the football team but also a complete dummy when it comes to girls. In one of the best moments of the movie he walks around the school and talks to girls about the weather until one of the replies with his usual line about how it is “raining cats and dogs in Idaho”.  He also sets up a contract with Eaglebauer, whose office is situated in the boy’s restroom and filled with cigarette smoke, to try and go out with Riff. What follows concerning this part of the plot is the most hilarious succession of “practice” date during which he teaches Tom and his “practice partner” Kate the art of teenage hook ups in a flashy car on top of a hill with a great view of the city. At the same time, Riff has found out that the Ramones are coming to town and decides to camp out in front of the venue for three full days to be first in line and get tickets for everyone in her school. After a cult appearance of the Ramones, riding in a car and actually “Hanging out of Second Avenue, eating chicken vindaloo” and a more or less violent run in with a Ramones groupie Angel, Riff succeeds in buying 1000 tickets. Unfortunately, principal Togar ends up seeing through all of her excuses for missing school and takes away concert tickets from both Riff and Kate. The girls almost give up on going to the show but as they drive to a last minute date with Tom and Eaglebauer they win tickets on a radio show. At the show, they end up meeting the Ramones after quite a bit of difficulty and while Riff gets her song to Joey, Kate finally realized her romance with Tom who has crashed the concert to get Riff but suddenly changed his mind in the middle of a chase through the backstage corridors. The next day principal Togar rallies up all of the parents to burn all of the rock’n’roll records they could take from their kids. The students’ uproar is ended when the Ramones show up looking for Riff and, followed by Togar’s  confused yet angry “Do your parents know that you are the Ramones?”, start a whole new level of high school rebellion. In the end, the police gets involved, the whole case goes public via yet another radio show and after she is named the only Ramone sister, the students literally blow up the school due to Kate’s science magic.

Riff camping out to get tickets

"This is the best day of my life"

Rocking out before the grand finale

According to Wikipedia the producer Roger Corman, King of the B movies, “wanted alatter-day version of his wild-teen films of the 1950s and 1960s, and he feltthat the best way to adapt to the 1970s would be to center the plot on thepopular music of the day”. The movie was first imagined as centered on disco music but the screenwriters Richard Whitley and Russ Dvonch decided to focus on punk rock instead. This more or less arbitrary decision led to the appearance of the Ramones and made this low budget movie a cult classic. Even though the production was obviously not so great and the budget was such that P.J. Soles had to come up with her (hilarious) own Riff Randall costumes, legendary scenes are definitely not lacking.  Early on in the movie we are presented with Ms. Togar’s investigation of the harmful effects of rock’n’roll music on white mice that tend to explode when exposed to the intensity of the Ramones and later on we do indeed see a huge white mouse in your typical punk apparel with headphones entering the Ramones concert. Another great thing is the introduction of Kate Ramebeau as studying nuclear physics and splitting protons as a hobby. The Ramones manager later speaks favorably of her latest Scientific American Article. The list goes on since the whole movie is just a wild progression of gags about rock’n’roll fandom and the inherent awkwardness of the teenage years.

Kate being an angsty teenager after gym class

As I mentioned above, I personally think that the biggest value of the movie is in its honest and the genuine portrayal of what the Ramones were all about. At times the band openly admitted to not being particularly proficient at playing their instruments and their leather-jacket-and-knee-hole-jeans look was as simple as were their four riff songs with catchy lyrics concerning your average punk rock experiences.They built their style upon the foundations of bands such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but also all kind of trashy pop acts and emerging protopunk bands. They wanted to have nothing to do with the overproduced music of the time that was abundant with elements that they found to be too complicated to think about and too far away from the old fun jams. Rock’n’Roll Highschool can be described in rather similar terms and it is in that way true to being all about punk rock a la Ramones. and it is in that way true to being all about punk rock a la Ramones. And while Riff Randall is a caricature of a music fan to quiet an extent, her fandom is also rather endearing and heartwarming to anyone that has ever genuinely loved a rock band of any kind. The scene depicting the Ramones playing in her bedroom in a marijuana induced fantasy is one of the cutest things one can imagine despite the fact that the band is indeed full of “ugly, ugly people” as the chief of police describes them. A typical, borderline trashy story about teenage rebellion and popular culture therefore assumes a whole new level of nostalgia for a time when music was more genuine and so were music fans.

Riff's fantasy brings the Ramones into her bedroom

Joey Ramone being as "tall and handsome" as Riff sees him to be

Most amazing bodysuit ever

In the end, it should definitely be mentioned that the tacky yet fun spirit of the 80s is all over the place in every shot of the movie and just the fact that the main character is indeed named Riff and wears the most ridiculous shiny track suits and the most amazing stripey bodysuit you have ever seen has to have at least some visual value. The movie is therefore a true paradise for all 80s lover as much as it is something of a low budget ode to teenagers, punk rock and music fans everywhere.

Subcultural Inside Job

Given that fact that I have been spending most of my stay in Croatia at my grandparents’ house where the Internet is awfully bad, the TV has 5 channels and any attempt at writing or studying is interrupted by various family members, pets and unbelievably frequent meals, I have taken to engaging into the typical summer activities such as spending a long time reading the papers, listening to the radio and watching reruns of old Croatian, British or American shows on the national TV. In all honesty, most of this has been more or less boring and my attempt to get some brain action by doing crosswords was equally dull but at least I have finally gotten to the point where I have some vague idea of what is happening not only Croatia but also the world. The newspapers that I have taken up are not all that interesting but every once in a while an article will seize my attention and such was the case with the news about the Russian feminist punk-rock activists Pussy Riot and their rather ridiculous court sentence. And while I did feel a little ashamed for never having heard of the collective in question, I found the commentary in one of the columns to be way more interesting than the poorly translated article giving the facts about the arrested band members and their trial. The columnist that drew my attention suggested that punk rock and similar movements has truly survived and can truly thrive only in places such as Putin’s Russia where the subversive element of the subculture is the most tangible and the most important part of it. He proceeded to argue that punk rock and rock in general have died off in Croatia in the late 90s when Croatia gained independence and there was no oppressive system that could be mocked or whose principal cultural elements could be used in a way contradictory to the system itself. Later that day, I randomly stumbled upon a TV documentary “Druga Strana Rock’n’Rolla” (The Other Side of Rock’n’Roll) that dealt with censorship of pop rock and punk rock bands in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian ministry of culture apparently had a practice of labeling records as “trash” depending on the quality of music and political correctness. The records that received the label were then taxed more heavily and therefore cost more than the ones that were considered to be art. The punk rock and similar records of the time were, naturally, often labeled as “trash” not so much because of the music but primarily because most of them had a lot to say about Yugoslavian communism. The examples that were listed were mostly all about lyrics that suggested that Yugoslavia was not communist heaven and that not everyone was as equal as the government wanted it to seem. A lot of the musicians that were interviewed, at the same time, said that they never really cared about the label in question and that their music just came naturally instead of being a conscious revolutionary act. One of the interviewees, interestingly enough, mentioned that Yugoslavia was the only communist country at the time (we’re talking late 70s and 80s) that actually had a vibrant, mildly subversive, punk rock scene. He followed this statement with wondering why there was never Russian punk at the time. Well, I guess there is now even though Russia has officially lost their original oppressive political regime.

Pussy Riot in Action

I guess all of that talk about subversive music and the accompanying subcultures made me wonder about the punk, rock and other similar genres of music. The columnist I mentioned above seemed to think that it is impossible to maintain honestly subversive music in a system such as capitalism since every label concerning genre or quality is nothing more than a pointer towards the social group that the product should be marketed at. I guess it’s the same old story that Dick Hebdige was writing about in his “Subculture, theMeaning of Style”, a great social science book about punk and subcultures in general. One of the main points that Hebdige makes is that subcultures come about and die out by the means of a very similar process. In particular, subcultures create their visual image and iconography by “taking over” cultural elements associated with the mainstream and therefore, implicitly, the dominant political system and incorporating them into a new context where their meaning becomes radically different. At the same time, the way a subculture dies out or gets incorporated in to the mainstream is very similar since all of these symbols are taken back and labeled as products with a specific, subcultural social value that makes them more desirable to a certain part of the population. My favorite example of this process are Dr Martens boots that used to be a strictly subcultural thing, from punks and metalheads to skinheads, and have now become a fashion staple. By buying a pair I basically paid to fit into a subculture better and it was their implied social value that was marketed to me and billion other heavy metal and other alternative music fans. Given that explanation of how subcultures are treated in capitalism the argument stating that subcultures cannot quite survive in modern, capitalistic states seems to be more than plausible. In fact, only a completely oppressive regime can be a place where subcultures truly thrive because then there exists a guarantee that their philosophy and all that represents it will never be commodified. I guess the Russian example from up above loosely fits this model since I cannot imagine Vladimir Putin allowing for anything that is openly against his politics to become marketable or desirable.

Classic Docs as featured on an alternative fashion Tumblr

At the same time, I wonder how beneficial the end of oppressive regimes was for all kinds of subcultures and vaguely subversive movements in most places. While the commodification of subcultural symbols implies that their meaning is being incorporated into the mainstream and to some extent loses its affectivity, it also means that they become available to a larger group of people and less stigmatized then they were while they were “truly” subversive. There are so many music records that, at this point, have cult value among the fans but were originally a call to a cultural revolution and an eye opener for many. Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” sold 50 million copies and is only topped by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, “Led Zeppelin IV”, “Born In the USA”, “The Wall”, “Nevermind” all hit more than 30 million copies and so on. Of course, not everyone that bought these albums was a true fan or a true believer in the philosophies of rock, grunge and such but what seems important to me is that they were at least exposed to this kind of thinking. Can a subculture still be subversive if it is a part of the mainstream? The question seems to be ridiculous until you realize that you can walk into any music store and buy a copy of any album that was ever considered subversive and buy into its message. I like to say that the age of big cultural revolutions is over because the overall accessibility of information and personal freedoms have become so great that all we have to do is sit in front of our computers and click stuff but the truth of the matter is that this also allows us to have as many microrevolutions as we want and to constantly build on our own opinions against the system that, ironically, almost wants us to do this so that they can more easily classify our consumer needs.

To finish up I want to mention just one more thing that I recently stumbled upon. Even though I haven’t really been following all the GOP drama I did read an article in which Paul Ryan lists Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. A couple of days later, Tom Morello himself wrote a “response” in the Rolling Stone calling out Ryan for not understanding their music or at least acting exactly as the people that RATM’s music is a response to.

“But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.” Morello writes.

Even though you can buy any RATM album, t shirts and merchandise in a billion places and Google-ing any of that will add a couple of adds to your Facebook and similar sites that classify you as a fan of similar music and supposedly leftist things that still sounds pretty subversive to me.

Girls Just Wanna Do Math

Hi! I have made my way back to Croatia and I am writing from my grandmother’s house, a couple meters away from the beach in unbearable heat. The post below is another girl rant pointed at the state in academia today and based on my observations in not only studying  but also teaching in the fields of mathematics and physics which are both heavily male dominated. It is something that I feel strongly about and that I think is rather important overall and hopefully I am not the only one that feels that way.

As I have mentioned before, I worked in a mathematics program for gifted 9^th and 10^th graders for a part of the summer and therefore had the chance no to only practice my teaching but also gain an insight in how demographics of all sorts affect the selection and treatment of participants in educational programs of this kind. The criteria were many and most of them were rather reasonable. For instance, we would not accept a lot of students from one school and very little from some other and we definitely tried to keep the diversity high. One other thing that seems to be a burning question in mathematics in general was accepting women. The acceptance in the program was very fair in this regard and there were more than a third of women and the scores on the diagnostic exam that was distributed on the first day were spread out more or less evenly, with one or two girls in each group of scores. I guess it was not all that surprising that the top five scorers or so were male but there was a girl in the top ten with a close score and for the sake of fairness she was given a chance to work, in a smaller problem solving group that met daily, with the other five students that proved to be most competent, at least according to the diagnostic exam that the counselors came up with. After about two weeks the girls’ mother called the head of the program and asked for her daughter to be transferred to a lower problem solving group because she felt uncomfortable with her current assignment. In her counselor’s report during weekly evaluations it became evident that it was not really the math that she was having issues with but rather her peers that were a little more assertive, a little more loud and all male. She ended being transferred to one of the groups with high/medium scorers and at the end of that week her new counselor readily reported that she does indeed feel more at ease but has, at the same time, made friends with another girl thus becoming somewhat distracted. That behavior continued until the end of the program and despite the skills she exhibited on that first exam, she definitely faded away from the picture in comparison to a lot of students that seemed to have less potential when we started but then improved in rather impressive ways.

It is confusing to me why this story had to progress this way or why it was kind of a given that our most impressive students will end up being almost all male. In all honesty, the group of top scorers was definitely one where it was hard to feel comfortable if one was not something of a prodigy but what bothers me the most is that, in the end, it was not about mathematics as much as it was about being assertive and confident. It is disconcerting that all other students in the group that were perhaps not as good as the one or two kids that could actually do all the problems were not as intimidated as the girl was and stayed in the group, learning how to be quicker and more competitive and at the same time taking advantage of all the extra material that they were shown as the supposedly most talented group. The issue here seems to be primarily in the gender imbalance and I guess the fact that the girl in question felt more comfortable and was suddenly way less shy in a group where there were girls somewhat corroborates that. The fact that she then proceeded to make the math and learning secondary to socializing definitely does not make this not all that amusing anecdote sound any better.

The situation in my own group, a little lower on the scoring scale, was a little more balanced but the attitude that some of the girls brought to the class were still not something to rejoice about. Two of them struggled with the material a little bit but seemed to find their lack of knowledge to be something to bond about instead of improving upon it. After the first half of the program they were also more than comfortable in chitchatting their way through class and hoping that one of the other kids would volunteer to present assigned proofs and calculations on the board. They both came in with stellar recommendation from their teachers and yet very soon they were more interested in which celebrities I find attractive than proving Lagrange’s theorem. The most improved girl in the group was nothing like that but given that she came from an art school, had an asymmetric haircut and almost matched me in wearing band t-shirts I feel like I cannot generalize her behavior to all, generic, teenage girls despite the fact that I liked her very much.

Even though I have long been aware of how hard and how deeply rooted in common popular culture it is that mathematics is a male dominated field for a reason, the final punch in the face, so to speak, came a couple of weeks later when the assignments for the other part of the program, the one where we worked with K-12 teachers, were being made and my request to work with a physics class was overruled by our department head’s request that I work with a class in which the teachers could appreciate the “feminine touch”. Unfortunately, I am never in a position to be offended or argue because, just like everyone else, I have to pay rent too but I was definitely shocked despite the fact that the probably meant it as something of a compliment. At the same time it was no surprise that most of the teachers in the said class were frustrated middle aged women that had a hard time adding fractions despite their long teaching careers.  The first person to algebraically solve a word problem without guessing and checking was, again, one of the two males in the class. To make the irony worse, he was a Spanish teacher that was thinking about picking up some math basics for his teaching portfolio.

Now, almost a week after all of our programs have ended, I am still somewhat disturbed by why all of this is typical. Of course, the girls in the math major (physics is very much like that as well) do often joke about being “bros” since everyone that we ever work with ends up being male but I guess it is always shocking to discover the way in which this gender imbalance seems to be taken as almost natural even before boys and girls actually join the field. Of course, this has been a fact for quite some time  and I guess most of it does stem from not only the past social convictions about math and science but about women in general but I do really like to think that we have surpassed that. Unfortunately it seems that what is happening with women in math and science is nothing more than a reflection of how deeply rooted common stereotypes about women still are. And it is not as much about women not being intelligent as men as it is about women being less assertive, less confident and overall more sensitive than men. It has become an instinctive response for a girl to be uncomfortable in a male dominated academic setting and her success seems to be measured against such a greater plurality of criteria. One of my coworkers was almost surprised by the fact that I do math and have something of a sense of style. It has become a safe bet to assume that a girl that is successful in mathematics does not necessarily look like a girl all that much or has time or desire to do something “girly”. Girliness is somehow seen as a weakness which is something that is way too prominent in today’s popular culture and therefore does not get ignored even in academia, where people are supposed to be intelligent and at least somewhat progressive. Overall the girls that end up trying to do math seem to end up playing the typical feminine role of being weak and not loud enough or at least distracted by clothes, boys or gossip. The academia, more than most workplaces, paints a very outdated image of women, an image that has been forced up on girlfolk almost forever.

Finally, I want to get back to the girls in my problem solving group and some of the small talk we would made before 9:30 when we were supposed to start working. One day the name Kim Kardashian randomly came up and by some strange circumstance one of the other kids asked who she was. The answer was that she was in a porno and has a huge bottom and is also really rich. One of the girls remarked that she must be very smart since she has cashed in basically everything she ever did. They talked about her the same way they talked about Justin Beiber or any of the celebrities that they deem worthy of mentioning. Being a loudmouth and a riot grrrl at heart I had to remark that the fact that her fame rests on pornography and big ass kind of reflects poorly on women everywhere. The art school student agreed with me, the other two rolled their eyes and repeated that she’s really rich and successful. I guess Kim Kardashian might be smart in some way but I do firmly believe that hers is not the kind of success a 9^th grader should think favorably of. At the same time, she does fall into a certain stereotype rather nicely and probably did not have to work on being assertive enough to show someone that she can do group theory.

The uncle Ben conjecture

Apologies for not posting form such a horribly long time but school got ugly and I had to focus my attention on all kinds of fun things like Galois groups, wave functions, diodes, dielectric constants and all that. The quarter has finally ended now and I am happily moved out of the dorms, housewife -ing away until I start work in about a week. I hope everyone’s summer has started out equally well, and here are some thoughts on people as absorbed in academia as we are around here doing outreach.

I guess my experience with education in the United States has been a little skewed since I have attended two years of a preparatory boarding school and then moved on to one of the top universities in the country, but at the same time being a part of institutions of that kind and moving almost exclusively in the corresponding social circles has given me a chance to observe what life in academia seem to be like and how easy it is to remove oneself from the so-called real world once you get absorbed into labs, theories and problems that are primarily impressive on paper. Going to the University of Chicago has definitely contributed strongly to this impression since not only are the differences between different parts of Hyde Park and the South Side of Chicago in general fairly prominent and historically connected with the presence of the University in a way that is somewhat hard to ignore but also the atmosphere among those involved with the University seems to suggest that we are indeed here to do academic work and leave the real world alone. While I do recognize that this might seem like a rather strong statement, and there definitely are exceptions to it in the form of multiple student groups involved in all sorts of activism here on campus and everywhere else, the University administration itself still seems to be rather conservative and, in fact, there are documents such as the Kalven report that explicitly argue against the University taking strong political or social views. At the same time the Kalven report should definitely not be cited as the source of what can probably be characterized as some form of social inertia that is prominent among a lot of the students around here, especially given that the authors make some great points about how individuals’ beliefs and freedoms would be affected by the University taking on political views, it is rather clear that the University has fostered something of an academic bubble that we are all more or less voluntarily contained in.

To some extent, I do understand why academia should be kept more or less separate from the, for the lack of a better word, worldly affairs. The reasoning is similar to that behind sending one’s daughter to a single sex boarding school: less distractions, more focus, higher efficiency, better results. As simple as that seems, though, the analogy does not strike me as perfect. While a scientist might be wasting his research time on catching up on world news and forming opinions about countries and conflicts that he might have never heard of and whose faith might be completely inconsequential to any of his life and work, the fact remains that he or she might posses other kinds of knowledge that could benefit people that are way closer and way more obvious, and helping someone in your neighborhood counts as activism and social awareness as much as supporting large scale changes that socially aware groups often try to enforce.

Being a part of an acclaimed academic institution implicitly makes one a part of the project of amassing knowledge, and knowledge and information are what ends up getting us through life. At the same time, not everyone is fortunate enough to have access to this process or even form a good idea of what it would be like to be a part of it. In watching people that are involved in academia make public appearances it can be easy to get lost in the downpour of technical words or simply intimidated by their apparent superiority that comes from knowing that they understand that much more about certain topics or just posses a greater fraction of world’s collective knowledge. Given that college education is not the cheapest thing in the world, especially in the United States, a lot of people that end up being researchers or professors also come from a somewhat privileged background that then seems to add a slight tone of elitism to the whole affair. Obviously, this can be intimidating and somewhat off-putting. And there are definitely people out there that have never considered going to college, that don’t have a very good idea of what going to college would be like or that are convinced that they could never make it in an environment that is fostered in most college campuses. Having been lucky to be flung into the realms of the privileged via a rather unexpected scholarship I have had a chance to witness how insecure about their future teenagers can be even after they have been given the best education possible. This path can only be harder for those that were not lucky enough to attend prep schools and that are by default at a disadvantage because the society seems to expect them to adopt certain behaviors and limit themselves to a particular way of life.

I used to believe that life-changing moments only happen in movies but the fact is that people’s lives change forever by most random occurrences and you never know when you can help someone realize something new about who they are and who they want to be. In a recent conversation a friend told me that he thinks that the parts of Hyde Park south of a certain point should be more consciously isolated as to not disturb the University students and faculty. I, on the other hand, feel as if we should do exactly the opposite and reach out to those parts of the neighborhood as much as possible. There is no precise way to tell how many kids there are in public schools around the city that have potential that no one, including themselves, has seen before. A sneak peek into what college life is like and what academics are about outside textbooks is something that they could only benefit from. It is hard to model yourself as something that you don’t understand and setting highly abstract goals is never particularly motivational. Unfortunately, the present culture seems to point most inner-city kids in a certain direction and it’s not exactly fair to blame them for pursuing certain paths if they have never been introduced to anything better. Being able to visit a college campus, talking to a college student or a professor, seeing some real science or other work done can be just that one little push that motivates someone to do a little better, try a little harder and end up having a better life. And I strongly believe that as long as you can make a difference for one single person it doesn’t really matter how many others didn’t pay attention or weren’t impressed. Most of us that end up being involved in academia have been privileged in a way that we were raised to think that we will and can go to college and get super educated and at this point, even as measly undergraduates, a lot of us have amassed quite a bit of knowledge and information and in this day and age knowledge is definitely power. And as much as I hate to quote a super hero movie, with great power does come a great responsibility and I strongly believe that all of us have at least some responsibility to reach out and help someone else realize that a better future is closer than it might seem.

Boy bands, monks and guitar feedback

Last Thursday I went to see a Wild Flag show with a friend and even though, being presented as an indie rock supergorup, the Portland based quarter does not really have much in common with the vast majority of music that I generally listen to, it was definitely one of the best shows I have seen in a long time. It was raw, it was energetic and the band themselves seemed to be having a lot of fun. It was one of those experiences when you walk out of the venue feeling genuinely happy after a couple of hours jumping around in between a bunch of strangers (the crowd at this show could have been more lively, though). Inspired by this happyoccasion, here’s a (slightly pretentious) piece on music.

“A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good.”
-Theo Vilmos in Tad William’s “War of the Flowers”

According to Wikipedia music has been around for at least 50,000 years and has evolved into becoming a “fundamental constituent of human life”. During prehistoric times most of the music present had its origin in sounds present in nature and even though it was sometimes used for entertainment it was mostly something that one would associate with shamanistic practices. It was practical and reflected the objective world. It is interesting to think about how much it has actually changed given that all of the big religions still rely on it heavily and that in the context of capitalism music itself has become a commodity and the making of music has given a rise to a whole industry so one could still argue that there is something practical to music. On the other hand, it has also been elevated to being an art and can serve as a way of channeling thoughts, feelings and general notions that are as far away from being objective or reminiscent of natural patterns of sounds and rhythms as much as possible. Given that music is also much more accessible in the contemporary society and something of a given ingredient of basically any culture and hence incredibly various the question of the criteria by which we judge music seems to be more prominent than it might have previously been.

I guess one way to go would be to simply asses the technical prowess of the artists in question and deal with critiquing music the same way one would approach an analysis of a painting. While this seems perfectly legitimate, it does not seem to be sufficient. Of course, skill is something that should be valued and viewing a piece of art as an art piece that can be taken apart and interpreted can definitely be a helpful set towards appreciating and understanding it but it is questionable whether this method of ascribing value could fully encompass music as a fundamental constituent of human life” or, in other words, a part of a way of life or a culture that one identifies with and that hence pervades everything he or she does and associates with. In talking to people whose taste in music might be different we are often inclined to say things such as “I can see why you would like that”, “I can respect them as an artist” and similar phrases that fully acknowledge that something is good according to a certain criteria that is at the same time not sufficient for it to be good in a more absolute, overall sense. We see why a certain artist could be liked and yet we are not crazy about them. What it seems to come down to is a process of finding a place for a certain piece of music in the system of values and beliefs that each of us implicitly constructs based on our heritage, past experience etc. Once a piece finds a place in the system it becomes a constituent part of it, it becomes more intelligible and more intuitive to our subconsciousness and starts to resonate with who we think we are.

Even though I am not a huge Tad Williams fan and I find the War of the Flowers to be rather mediocre, I am strongly in favor of the quote above and what it seems to be speaking to is exactly that feeling of finding something that can be a part of the system that one fits the world into, that makes sense in the overall scheme that is the essential take on how things out there are related for each specific individual. As people change, the preferences change and certain things stop to resonate as strongly and become valued less and substituted with something that is more sensible in this very specific, localized sense but the principle reminds the same and a former boy band fan will feel the same excitement for her new preferred type of music. Consequently, establishing a value scale between the two seems almost impossible. Feeling cannot be treated as objective variables and I can’t think of a number that could quantify the butterflies that accumulate in your belly while you’re waiting for your favorite band to come out on the stage and blow you away. How good the band objectively is becomes more than secondary in this context. The music is good because you feel it, because when it randomly comes up on your iTunes you feel the need to drop everything and just stare at the wall listening with a stupid smile across your face. It is good because it makes sense in a way that is inherently yours and intuitive even if it is twenty minutes of guitar feedback, an Italian opera aria or Nicki Minaj talking about her ass.