DEV Community: Endgame

What does it feel like when you’re alone in a crowd?

Endgame — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 20:12:10 +0000

I started at a community college, drawn into a computer science class based in C++ by an enthusiastic chemistry professor who also knew some basic to intermediate C++. The class was intense and interesting and after meandering through a series of courses in a half hearted attempt to prep for medical school and pivot from nursing, I was left with a sense of pride once I finished the class. I had a working project, a (now basic) C++ program that calculated an integral and also performed a Riemann sum until the Riemann sum was within an error tolerance. I was also left with a sense of being alone. The class wasn’t small and out of the people there I was one of only a few women there and the only Black woman. However, everyone in class was pleasant and cooperative and it was a great experience. I didn’t let that sense of feeling out of place stop me, after graduating high school at 14 and starting college at 15 I was used to being out of place with my peers. I spent a little time soul searching then quickly applied and was accepted into a OSU.

OSU was a different experience all together. It took a long time to find other’s like me even with the resources of slack and discord and group projects to this day I only know four other Black female software engineers and a handful of Black men, from my school. All of these I sought out myself and introduced myself and formed a sort of community. I started to do more research and found the disheartening statistics of the field. I read up on factors of why Black people aren’t entering into CS degrees, the difficulties in being hired and seen as competent. I felt the impostor syndrome on a personal level. I learned the history of black women in computing and felt and lived parts of the movie Hidden Figures (2016) in real life.

When I started interning I was faced with even more hurdles and triumphs than I had ever anticipated. I was left with a feeling of exhaustion. I joke with friends and family that the title of the book “Black Girls Must Die Exhausted” by Jayne Allen sums up my life. It wasn’t the work, it was the complex intersection of people and me; It was the raised eyebrows, the looks, the comments, the stares at my different hairstyles, the feeling of needing to police my every breath so as to not cause anymore strain to those who were already offended or standoffish about me taking up space in a club I how somehow gotten admittance to. I felt the words unsaid and said hang around my neck like a weight so heavy some days. Slowly, begrudgingly I gained respect, and each day, each new person was a new battle. I was not presumed to have a level of competence when I walked in. I learned to speak up for myself. I learned to bite my tongue. I learned to learn more. I learned to know the answer before asking the question if possible. I learned to hide my true feelings.

I ran in the cold every night after finishing up work each day at one internship. -5F, ice on the streets, I ran, letting the cold leech out the heat I felt at the day’s events. Letting the burn of my muscles sear away the anxiety and anger I felt. Letting each puff of air I exhaled melt away the stress. 1 hour, 2 hours, sometimes 3. I went to bed too tired to feel, ready for the next day even when I wasn’t.

As someone of two minorities in computer science this is a question I have known the answer to since starting my journey. The answer to this question has been felt in emotions, stares, comments and so much more throughout my education and blossoming professional career. For some who read this post , the topic I am about to discuss might seem like a downer or too heavy for blog I am writing. But when asked to discuss my career and my experiences and my education, I am drawn back to how the world see’s me first. I am not my skills first. I am not my creativity, I am not my drive or passion. I am Black. I am a woman. Everything else comes second when the first two are known.

Black women make up around 3% of computer science jobs (Daley, 2021). This statistic to some seems insignificant. I am sure some of you reading this will roll your eyes and click away citing “woke” agenda or not wanting to read something you have little interest in. But for the rest of you here is how my journey has started in computer science and then I will tell you how I want it to end.

Why does all I have written above even matter?

It matters when you are in a class and it’s a group of men and when during the course of casual conversation a student brings up faking sexual assault to get out of a class and makes it a joke. It matters when you are interning at a company and you ask your boss the best way to stand out and without even knowing you he says “be nice”, with the passive aggressive tone you know to well , reeking of the implied “Angry Black Woman” stereotype you have to tone done your whole being to avoid even giving any credence too. It matters when you are the only woman on a team, time and time again and other engineers make comments, like joking that only a “friend can touch your privates” then laughing crassly , after only just saying moments before “I know this isn’t PC but I will say it anyway”. It matters when they don’t care for your discomfort and only for their amusement.

It matters when every time you are hired, you have to fight the side looks, and side whispers that you are hired for your skin, for DEI metrics, for pictures. It matters when you attend a new intern event filled with over a hundred people, none of which look like yourself, you walk into a room head held high as eyes turn and you are called to the front to show prominently for when there are photos and media taken. It matters when you have to take almost a year off for recuperating and soul searching after a horrible internship experience you have to strongly about if you even want to continue in CS anymore.

And it matters when you choose to come back, and to push on so that one day, some girl who is maybe not even born will be the last person to experience the things you have.

Now you have the answer of how it feels to be alone in a crowd, and not to just be part of the crowd.

“Do the best until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Maya Angelou
Daley, S. (2021, March 31). Women in tech statistics show the industry has a long way to go. Built In. Retrieved January 11, 2023, from https://builtin.com/women-tech/women-in-tech-workplace-statistics

The Power of Waiting To Fail

Endgame — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 20:01:15 +0000

Photo by Brett Jordan
From an early age I grew up in an environment where hoping for something more was merely waiting to have those same hope come crashing down to the reality of a situation. Whether it was hoping for some nebulous theological figure to swoop down like Q from Star Trek Voyager and change my homelife, or hoping for something different for dinner than canned vegetables and white rice, each was just begging for quick dose of reality to dash such childish delusions. I learned to move forward even when the possibility of not moving forward was always there, to swim hard against an even harder current even when you might never gain a foot more of space towards the shore. I learned to keep going even when all the odds seemed unlikely. I learned to wait to fail and still succeed.

One of my first days of clinical I remember vividly. I was 17 about to turn 18 and waiting at the nurse’s station with all my other classmates, slightly worried they would find out I was underage, slightly worried they would sense I didn’t fit in among all the adults. And one of my fellow clinical students leaned in and said “You seem so calm and collected always, how do you do it?” He meant it seriously with a slight wistful tone to his voice. Inside I was turmoil. I was sure I would fail. Never mind I had the highest grades in class, never mind I had nearly memorized the textbook. Never mind that most of the clinical experience was easy and rote, I had set in my mind I would fail but I would keep trying anyway.

It was an exercise I was well versed in, the first time I opened an algebra book and began teaching myself algebra. I am going to fail but that’s okay. Once I had said my little mantra I could continue, from driving lessons on ice glazed gravel roads with a madman for an instructor, to my first terrified day as a new grad nurse on the floor with life in my 19 year old hands. I am going to fail but that’s okay. Day after day, experience after experience this still played in my heads. A sort of permission for not being great enough to succeed and yet also pushing me ahead because failure was not an option.

The duality was striking even to myself. My only hope of moving past my tumultuous and torturous homellife for myself was my success. The permission I gave myself was merely a self soothing act, like giving yourself a hug. You could feel it was your arms around you and it didn’t do much but maybe you felt slightly better. It was a lie I told myself to not implode from the crushing pressure. I could not fail. I had to succeed at all costs. Staying up late for hours and hours and days to get the grade. Getting perfect grades on every test, teaching myself ACT prep, graduating high school at every cost. I was like an athlete running in the Olympics and the Olympics was my life.

Everything began an internal competition with myself. And still I soothed myself with the life. I am going to fail but that’s okay. It was less soothing with every passing day. It was not enough to be great I had to be the best. A+ in class, and yet still asking the professor for extra credit assignments. Final grade in class and 96% but wait there is a mistake it should be 98% for the final grade; did it matter when both grades got the coveted A+? A calculus professor, said something that was a slight scabbed picked off the wound I covered so deftly all my life. “Perfection will be the death of you”. He was prone to such glib phrases, equal parts truth and careless. He had a certain way of saying things coupled with truth and also slightly scathing. It was very apropos I gave him a mug that said “Tears of your students” the last day of his series of class, he laughed. I was amused. That day I had been slightly peeved at the comment he said, but it stuck. Perfection was the death of me.

It was just a few years ago that something changed. Some would say a near death experience, but lying there I didn’t feel worried about dying but more so irritated that my limbs wouldn’t move, irritated that I had classes to finish and couldn’t do some more homework that night. And finally days later, irritated that what once made sense no longer did. It was more than JavaScript and servers and integration testing, it was my life. I was working one of the most stressful jobs I have ever had for an employer that didn’t care, working a second job and going to school for a post bacc degree that I came to my senses. Why? What goal was I trying to achieve? What silent approval was I hoping to get? What was the point in always waiting to fail?

Slowly I started unraveling a of learned pessimism. I always joked “I was pessimistic until there was something to be optimistic about“. And after so many years of nothing or little to be optimistic about, things changed and I failed to recognize it.

I had choices, and so many options. Not a need to just survive but I could also thrive. I didn’t have to accept failure, I didn’t have to fight for perfection. I could just be. And with that I was able to say no and start finding what I really wanted to do and what suited me. I was able to step into the unknown, take changes and finally exhale a breath I had been holding in since I first cried out at a strange cold world over 20 years ago.

I would like to say I don’t wait to fail anymore that I don’t tell myself it’s okay. But I do, but this time it’s more like a permission to live. Getting a 4.0 isn’t so important the 4th time around, getting all A’s is something desired but not a game changer. Walking away from places, people, jobs, life situations, even family and friends that don’t suit you is something that is required not optional.

It’s in our flaws that we find our greatest strengths and that is the exquisite beauty of life.

As I move forward in life and career I am reminded of the power of failure. It’s okay to fail on the path to success and truly in trying and not always reaching the mark I have learned more than anything that ever came perfectly. It’s in our flaws that we find our greatest strengths and that is the exquisite beauty of life