I see her complaints about her misperceived technical competence relative to her peers as orthogonal to the sexism. I'm going to skip the sexism part because I really don't have the competence to talk about it.
First, she went to Stanford, a school absolutely BUILT on bullshit, bluster, competitiveness and social networking. I'm about as dead center of the stereotypical male engineer as it gets--and the Stanford attitude came through and sure made me cringe when looking at graduate school. UC Berkeley matched my personality much more strongly.
Second, her parents inculcated into her to care way too much about her relative competence rather than doing something interesting. This, in my opinion, is always the dividing line that separates out the genuinely good from the mediocre. When you write a website to optimize trading card game returns, who cares whether it took you 5 hours or 15 hours to write it? It does something you think is interesting, and that is good enough.
Third, it seems like being the offspring of two PhD parents that she was missing a few social survival skills that most people learn from home. To quote House: "It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what." That doesn't make people bad, but everybody has their own wants, needs, desires, agendas, etc. Everybody has to learn to deal with that at some point.
And, my thanks to that professor who made you a TA. I have occasionally, myself, had to twist the arm of a female undergraduate to become a TA, take on a programming assignment for a company, or enter a programming competition.
First, she went to Stanford, a school absolutely BUILT on bullshit, bluster, competitiveness and social networking. I'm about as dead center of the stereotypical male engineer as it gets--and the Stanford attitude came through and sure made me cringe when looking at graduate school. UC Berkeley matched my personality much more strongly.
Second, her parents inculcated into her to care way too much about her relative competence rather than doing something interesting. This, in my opinion, is always the dividing line that separates out the genuinely good from the mediocre. When you write a website to optimize trading card game returns, who cares whether it took you 5 hours or 15 hours to write it? It does something you think is interesting, and that is good enough.
Third, it seems like being the offspring of two PhD parents that she was missing a few social survival skills that most people learn from home. To quote House: "It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what." That doesn't make people bad, but everybody has their own wants, needs, desires, agendas, etc. Everybody has to learn to deal with that at some point.
And, my thanks to that professor who made you a TA. I have occasionally, myself, had to twist the arm of a female undergraduate to become a TA, take on a programming assignment for a company, or enter a programming competition.