Ok. I’d like to be a consistent blogger but as is apparent fairly early on… this doesn’t come naturally to me. So I may need some encouragement from my many “fans” ever now and then.
Ok… here’s what I was thinking about today…
It was my first day back to school for the second semester of my M.A. And I have this class called Textual Traditions in the Old Testament… boring to most people… exciting to me. However… here’s the situation: There are a total of 8 people in this class… it’s an MA/PhD seminar class. There are 2 other MA students. 5 PhD students. Of the 8 students, 7 are male. The prof is a guy too. And then there’s me… and for the record, I’m very much a girl. When I’m thinking rationally I know that this doesn’t matter. There’s no difference… we’re all students passionate about the OT… so who cares if I’m the only girl? (There’s supposed to be another girl and when she didn’t show up today I made some kind of joke to which Dr. Boda responded something like, “Sara, you’ve never had trouble holding your own before.”) The fact that I’m a girl makes no difference to the prof and most likely no difference to any of the other students in the class… but being the only girl makes me feel this pressure… a pressure not to let women in Biblical Studies down. In my mind it’s like the fate of women in Biblical Studies rests upon my ability to produce awesome results in this class. In my mind… it’s like if I say something stupid then it makes women everywhere look stupid. So this is obviously an exaggeration of a little insecurity that I feel but do you think that I actually have reason to feel this way? It’s weird that in this day and age I feel pressured to prove the competency and intelligence of women… what’s with that?
So… am I ridiculous? Or does this actually make sense a little?
I’d like to hear a reaction to this from both guys and girls… what do you think?
Posted by saralesleylocke 