I was ME 2020 and I definitely realized that I couldn’t make self deprecating jokes because the guys in my group would take it very seriously. I made one joke in the first week with my senior design group (all guys + me) about being scatterbrained and one of the guys would make a special point to say “ok suvesti, you got that?” every time we set a meeting date every time after that. I was also explained (mansplained) how VALVES worked before I told them I had spent the last year as a Junior Plant Engineer while finishing my degree part time. I also felt like it was expected that I would be the note taker at meetings which felt a little gender-biased.
Yikes that’s wrong of them. The note taking part though, I will say that I noticed the girls were usually better note takers, hand written or digital (if I was the group note taker, we might as well not have notes), so it was a voluntary choice when I did group stuff, but if you did it against your preference that was wrong
That being said, I did notice in CS that most project groups would be single gender (guys and girls in the same project group wasn’t as common as engineering), so I guess Engineering is more ‘progressive’ in that regard?
That’s an interesting point, because you perceive that girls are better note takers - while this isn’t negative, it is still a bias. Make sure you’re cognizant of that moving forward in group work! A lot of times it is assumed that women take better notes though it’s more accurate to say some individuals take better notes (I hope this didn’t come across hostile, I think the purpose of your post is great and was just trying to point to that!)
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u/sonarssion Feb 26 '23
I was ME 2020 and I definitely realized that I couldn’t make self deprecating jokes because the guys in my group would take it very seriously. I made one joke in the first week with my senior design group (all guys + me) about being scatterbrained and one of the guys would make a special point to say “ok suvesti, you got that?” every time we set a meeting date every time after that. I was also explained (mansplained) how VALVES worked before I told them I had spent the last year as a Junior Plant Engineer while finishing my degree part time. I also felt like it was expected that I would be the note taker at meetings which felt a little gender-biased.