Yeah, so for all the talk I do about how people have a stereotypical view of men being unintelligent grunting beings who watch football and do “manly” things, I sure was guilty of stereotyping someone today. So I had a test in one of my history classes, and my really mean russian professor made us stay after the test time to finish the rest of the class with a boring thrilling lecture.
There’s this guy, either a Freshman or Sophomore (my friend and I are like the only seniors in this class, and we make sure to rub it in all the faces of the little kids who are just starting), and he seems to fit in one of NMT’s pretty prevalent stereotypes. He usually comes to class wearing a long trench coat, and he has around 30 metal spikes poked into the bill of his hat, and before class he listens to very loud death metal music, that is so loud the whole class can hear. So, keep this image in your mind and read on, because it’s about to get interesting.
See, when you go to a small engineering school, with a population of predominantly white males, there are some pretty big stereotypes that people get labeled with. There’s the large crowd of Computer Science majors, who are all very pasty white, usually have long greasy hair, and very pale skin from sitting in their room coding and playing video games all day. Then there’s the people who aren’t really CS nerd material, but they don’t really fit with the standard social crowd, i.e. they wear full length black trench coats, baggy clothes and listen to angry music. And recently there’s an influx of hip young preppy students who want to be nerdy on the inside, but not on the outside, and usually don’t survive long because Socorro is too lonely and depressing, and not nearly hip nor trendy enough. Most of these people inevitably end up transferring to UNM, where you can be an engineer but still tote around a Starbuck’s cup and have spiky highlighted hair.
So anyway, I promise I’m going somewhere with this…
I was sitting in my history class while our professor was delighting us with wonderful tidbits about Oliver Cromwell, and my friend Jake leaned over to me and goes, “hey that guy up there is knitting”. Well lo and behold I look and this guy is crocheting (Jake doesn’t quite know the difference :-P) what looked like a scarf. And I said, “hmm, that’s weird” to Jake, and he said, “why? you knit.” So I thought about it and realized that I was guilty of being the very person that I sometimes rant about. I mean, yes the guy does fit into a pretty broad stereotype of people that commonly occur at my school, but I wasn’t willing to see who he was outside of that identity, and that’s why I was taken aback that he was knitting.
So the moral of the story is the old adage, you can’t judge a book by its cover. And for those of you who may be offended by my comments about pasty white CS nerds, or if you are a pasty white CS nerd, I apologize. But go to Tech for even one hour, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. I mean, I once was part of a program designed to recruit new students and help freshmen adapt to college life, and they actually had a program where they encouraged freshmen to find a CS major and be friends with them so you could make sure they came out into the sunlight at least once a day. Really. I’m not joking.
