elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

Continuing the girls in tech theme (but why, you might ask... it's so boring to talk about gender when there's so many cool things you can do with code? and I agree):

When I was in 7th grade we had some lousy IBM computers in a classroom taught by Mr. Livingston. Yes, my dad made the joke when he met him at parent night (... I presume?) I was just starting to get embarassed by stuff like that. Anyway, we wrote programs in basic, and saved them to cassette. I just got my paper route too, and was listening to my new walkman while delivering papers. Once I put in one of my program cassettes just to see what it sounded like - I'm sure everyone did this.

One thing that kept me off the machines was the fact that you could only do so much in class, and then you had to stay after school in order to get some real programming time in. I tried to do this once, and signed up ahead of a boy. This was one of the boys that was given a seat in the coveted pre-calculus table the year before. So I already had a grudge against him, as I was denied a seat there not due to skills but because I didn't physically make it to the seat in time on the first day of school. What is this, math skills via footrace? Duck duck goose? I threw a tantrum, which was the only time I got kicked out of class, and was never given pre-calc until high school out of a series of coincidences.

Anyway, this kid who I had a grudge against was there in the computer lab every day after school. I was only there that one day, and took "his" computer. He yelled very loudly and told the teacher that it was his computer, and that I couldn't even type (which was true). I know his agony of suddenly having nothing to do after class other than watch the fat girl type with one finger on his precious computer. I stood my gound that day, with teacher's help, but I wasn't really incentivized to come back. Walking home was a major social event, and I would get completely disbanned from the girl clique if I stopped going home with them and stayed in the computer lab instead. No more MTV, no more ouiji board. I just couldn't bear it. So I never went back.

I did make the most of my class time by creating a very cool matchmaker program. I listed all the girls names and boys names in the class, and asked the user to give their name. I think I chose a date for them based on haircolor or something dumb. It caused a serious disturbance in the classroom once people started trying it out. Tee hee.

Conlcude what you like about these anecdotes. I conclude that a) girls won't be interested in anything without a social component and b) girls are pointedly unable to overcome something socially negative, for fear of being branded for life, and c) buy enough computers in the first place, silly!