Entry tags:

geekfeminism, worthwhile

Last night, a post that has been percolating in my head for literally years came out in a rush:

Years ago, probably around when I started my master’s degree, I had a chat with a friend about grad school, and she was telling me about how she’d made the decision not to continue on for her PhD. She had a lot of good reasons that just made a lot of sense for her life and her family and her goals, but she mentioned that although she was sure it was the right choice for her, sometimes she felt like she was letting down her entire gender because so few women continue on to do a PhD.

You can read the whole thing here. It's about how hard it is to quit or say no when you're a minority within whatever it is you're doing, and it's about how leaving makes you feel guilty, and it's about dealing with that guilt for not being a shining paragon of people like you.

Once I was done the first draft, I looked at it and wondered... should I post this? Will it help anyone? I try to be very careful about what I write for geek feminism, trying for stuff that I think will maybe people's lives better in some small way. But this felt like a topic I'd seen covered before -- should I bother? Was I adding something useful to the discussion?

I did revisions to make it more coherent, more useful, easier to scan. But I still felt unsure about the post when I made it public. And today, I got one of those rare posts that makes me feel like it was really worthwhile.