Ghosts are scary

There were 2 classes when I was in third grade. I mentioned my teacher, and I loved her. I still remember scampering to the front doors of the single story school building to find my name on the lists, and feeling thrilled when I saw I had the teacher I wanted. But we had to switch rooms for certain courses, and I had math with Ms. Awful.

I don’t like to introduce evil characters here, because I don’t think I’ve met a truly bad person. It’s a quest of mine to understand circumstances, figure out why people react poorly in certain situations, to look past initial anger or pain. Unhappy people seek to hurt others. So when someone seems evil, I try to pity them a bit and work at peeking into her life so I don’t misjudge.

Ms. Awful was going through her second divorce, leading to my years long belief that women used Ms. to denote their divorced status. During one class, we were toiling away at worksheets. I kept staring at mine, unfamiliar with concepts and completely lost as to how to work with the numbers. The sounds of pencils depositing their marks on papers throughout the room echoed in my head as for the first time, I was unable to quickly finish a task. Feeling miserably stupid, I worked slowly through the problems, sure I was making mistakes and not understanding how I could have fallen behind the entire class.

I placed my paper at the bottom of the stack as we passed our pages toward the right side of the classroom where Ms. Awful would collect them. Ashamed of my ability, I walked home that afternoon with my head down, near tears.

Dad was there – he stopped working outside the home to care for Brother when my Grandma was unable to babysit full time. He can always bring the tears out from inside – all concerned comfort. He cradled me in his arms until my sobs eased, then started with questions.

“We’ll learn it.” He promised. “Tell me the problems and we’ll practice until you get it. You’re very smart. They’re just not teaching you right.”

Full of anger and eager to fix my problems, he called Mom at work. Demanding she call the school and get a copy of this worksheet from hell, he had already failed his attempt to have me reproduce these problems which had brought me to despair.

Mom didn’t call, but after soothing me on the phone, left work early and proceeded directly to school. She arrived home, 2 papers in hand, shaking with anger.

Dad, Brother and I were sipping root beer floats in the living room. Pushing the white ice cream into the liquid, then watching it pop back up through the foam made Brother giggle. Dad’s face eased into another frown of concern when she stepped inside.

“It’s 6th grade work.” She stated. “She feels that [me] acts superior, and wanted to show her how it felt to be confused. She wanted her to feel stupid!”

She glared at Dad, infuriated. Mom and I ease out of anger slowly, burning with rage for hours after a confrontation. There was yelling at Ms. Awful, and I’m pretty confident swearing occurred as well.

“I told her we’d do it. You can turn it in tomorrow. If she thinks she can beat you, she's wrong.”

The three of us sat at the table, working slowly through the material. We drank root beer, had dinner, and made our way through the worksheet that had so distressed me. I remember Dad putting his hand on my shoulder after we finished.

“You’re very smart.” He told me, blue eyes serious and kind. “People will try to make you doubt that, or feel bad about it. You can’t let them. You just do what you can, then find people to help you learn what you don’t know. And if people don’t like it, that’s too bad. They’re just jealous because they’re not as smart as you.” He’s wise, my dad. I’ve never doubted how much he loves me or how very proud he is.

Same goes for Mom. But her instinct was to soothe, fighting to suppress her own fury to ease my injured feelings. She laid next to me after I’d showered and put on pajamas. Tucked under my covers in my double bed, blanket under my arm, we talked. She was the one who explained that Ms. Awful was going through a hard time.

“It’s not at all acceptable that she did this. She knows I’m watching her though. If you ever feel bad in there again, you walk out and call me. I told the secretaries that if you ever come in the office, they’re to call me and keep that bitch away from you.”

I turned my head to look at her, now glaring at my ceiling fan.

“It’s not nice to call people that.” She told me, and I laughed at her, rolling to cuddle to soothe us both. “Your dad’s right – you are smart. But sometimes… Sometimes it’s nice to let other people shine. To maybe not answer every question. To not show how well you did on every test when other people don’t do well. It makes them feel stupid, and it hurts to feel stupid. You’re very smart, but you can’t always talk about it.”

She paused to sigh, trying to choose the right words. I understand her problem. Dad wanted me to kick ass, which is wonderful. He still does want that, and screw other people’s feelings. If I feel superior, that’s because I am.

Mom wanted to make life OK – for me to be liked and not singled out like I was that day. That my attitude targeted me for failure bothered her. She attacked Ms. Awful, and continued to torture the woman. I think she mentioned the incident when they met last year, and it’s been almost 20 years. But she also wanted me to learn to be a bit humble, to avoid being hurt again.

So I learned, staying awake that whole night, thinking about who I wanted to be. The lesson, that being slow and confused hurt, stayed with me. I got humble, to the point of downplaying my own ability so severely that I actually think I’m stupid at times. I don’t accept compliments well, play dumb to make other people comfortable with asking questions or trying to teach me things, and I’m tremendously hard on myself because I can’t stand someone else trying to cut me down.

So when Charlie sent me this article, I started thinking about coveted traits in science. I’ve developed the ability to wax poetic on my strengths. Many of them could be viewed as more feminine approaches. I’m good with patients – sympathetic, patient and comfortable. I like working with students, again, having social skills and relatively gentle mannerisms makes me easy to work with. My humble nature and excellent work ethic leaves upper level people eager to collaborate – I’m very appreciative of their attention and the opportunities, and I don’t require excessive credit for a great deal of work. I accept responsibility and blame, even when they’re not all deserved. So while I may not write code as quickly as other scientists, or understand the more complex concepts as effortlessly, I’m good at what I do.

Feminism never resonated with me. It just didn’t fit with how I was raised. Mom, Aunt and Grandma all worked through their adult lives, and had played the dominant role in caring for the home and family. Being female came with great responsibilities, but I had wonderful role models – women who worked hard, loved deeply and were smart and resourceful enough to make it work. I also had men in my life who adored all of us - appreciated our strength, cheered our successes and were quite impressive in their own strengths and talents.

I think saying women aren’t capable is garbage. Absolute trash that’s not even worth writing about.

For me, this article was good. I think it brought out some general points that spoke to me, and encouraged some progress that I think would help science and academia as well as some talented women who are currently overlooked.

I do keep coming back to the fact that I’ve mentioned many times that I don’t want to stay here. I’m just sticking around to learn and work a little more, but I know I’m not good enough for academia long term. And that’s OK, because I don’t want it. I’m not good at teaching, so don’t bother to evaluate those abilities. I suck at writing highly technical papers, so please help me after I tell you from the beginning that I’m struggling.

It's nearly impossible for me to determine how I really feel - what I really want. Do I change my plans according to what I think is possible, subconsciously picking the easier path, avoiding the pain and criticism that I believe would be linked with staying in this world and fighting for my position?

When I’m working on a project, and I walk into my boss’s office for another reason, it hurts to be uninvolved with a meeting. To know I’m responsible for a study, but to be excluded from a casual all-male meeting about the more technical aspects is demeaning. It hurts, and I’m not willing to subject myself to the possibility of criticism or the appearance of being superior and cocky by butting in or fighting the system to make it better for other women.

The vast majority of experiences leave me proud to be a scientist, and I'm trained as a physicist. Classes full of guys were mostly great. Research in a male-dominated field has also been very positive. I had an easy time getting into grad school, earning fellowships and had an array of wonderful offers upon graduating. There are small glitches, but I don't think they are intentional or malevolent. We are working in a system where more masculine qualities are highly valued. So while I have been consistently encouraged and taught and offered incredible opportunities, there have been bad moments. Have they hit me harder than most women? I'm not sure.

For me, the process of feeling inadequate and unwelcome started early, and it came at the hands of another woman. Hell, I just deleted a paragraph at the beginning of this post that apologized for telling yet another story to make my point, taking too long to introduce the article, demanding too much time and energy of my readers. This story took a great deal out of me and leaves me feeling very small inside. It should be a reminder of my parents and how lucky I am. Instead it feeds that internal voice that says nobody likes a smartypants.

So while the process of feeling badly continued in small ways throughout my education, and was largely internal, I’m well aware of how to accept it.

There was a worksheet in third grade that taught me.