Questions
First Name: Angela Major: Computer Science
1. What kind of items that you carry daily identify you as someone that is interested in technology?
Laptop, camera, cell phone
2. What motivated you to go in a technology field? Were you involve in clubs in high school or middle school that promoted technology?
Not at all; there were no clubs in high school or middle school that were particularly technology-related. I was interested in learning more about technology because the field moves at a fast pace, I wanted to learn useful skills, and I had an aptitude for it.
3.What kind of words (relating to technology) do you use with your friends, that a parent or someone that is not in this field would not understand?
Quite a lot, I'd imagine... it's hard to even begin to think of examples... maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but there's just words relating to concepts that people wouldn't understand if they hadn't learned them, including people in technology fields that are not computer science, for example. So it feels kind of silly to do this but I'll try to come up with some.
Computer language and coding-related: recursion, OOP (object-oriented programming), compiled vs. interpreted languages, strongly-typed, abstraction, encapsulation, grammars, inheritance, regular expression
Algorithms-related: Big-O, induction, heuristic, P vs. NP (complexity), hashing, search tree, array, linked list, randomization, amortized analysis
Systems-related: buffer overflow, cache, thread/process, distributed networks, protocols, heap, stack, memory, disk, database, client/server
4. Describe how you feel about the term "female tech geek"? Have you been called other nicknames either in high school or in college?
Ummm no one's ever called me a "female tech geek" or anything related. I think the term applies to people who are really outwardly interested in technology, especially things like gadgets and gizmos, and it's not a bad term. To me it implies interest, excitement, and knowledge about technology.
5. How do you feel as a woman in technology field, considering woman are a minority going into these fields?
I feel like women are a minority only because they choose to be (as in, most women choose to go into other fields). However, plenty of women are going into technology, especially bioengineering/biochem, neuroscience, etc, if not quite as many as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or computer science. From every indication and experience I've had, women are treated no differently than the men in computer science fields and have just as much if not more respect for being there. I'm excited to be a woman in technology.
First Name: Debbie Major: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
1. What kind of items that you carry daily identify you as someone that is interested in technology?
- laptop, blackberry, computer bag, glasses
2. What motivated you to go in a technology field? Were you involve in clubs in high school or middle school that promoted technology?
- interested in engineering through women's outreach camp for science and engineering. excelled in math and science classes, and participated in math clubs and science research.
3.What kind of words (relating to technology) do you use with your friends, that a parent or someone that is not in this field would not understand?
- terms: cognitive science, computational neuroscience, action potentials, inter spike intervals, cortex, corpus callosum, etc etc
- topics: calculus-related terms, graph analogies, regions of the brain
4. Describe how you feel about the term "female tech geek"? Have you been called other nicknames either in high school or in college?
- called a nerd (but proud of it, really), and considered very techy compared to friends at home. i wasn't attacked, but i was known to be able to work computers really well, especially in designging websites
5. How do you feel as a woman in technology field, considering woman are a minority going into these fields?
i am a bit intimidated, but I think am i am looking forward to the challenge.
Debbie Yee
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Class of 2011
Questions
First Name: Christie Major: Applied Math & Physics (double)
1. What kind of items that you carry daily identify you as someone that is interested in technology?
Cell phone? I carry my laptop sometimes, but definitely not daily.
2. What motivated you to go in a technology field? Were you involve in clubs in high school or middle school that promoted technology?
I was in a Gifted & Talented program starting in the 1st grade that exposed me to more math & science when I was younger; this was most likely the foundation for my interest. In middle and high school, I basically participated in any math or science-related extracurricular or competition, and I loaded up my schedule with as many science courses as I could.
3.What kind of words (relating to technology) do you use with your friends, that a parent or someone that is not in this field would not understand?
bash; terminal; command line; linux; ubuntu; sudo;
4. Describe how you feel about the term "female tech geek"? Have you been called other nicknames either in high school or in college?
The term itself isn't bad, but the context that it could be used in has the potential to be rather offensive. I haven't really been called names...possibly "genius" or "nerd"?
5. How do you feel as a woman in technology field, considering woman are a minority going into these fields?
Sometimes I'm afraid that people will think that my achievements arise from being a women rather that from my own efforts. Other than that, I'm glad to be in a technology(-ish) field.
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