The unspoken signs that make you want to leave

You’ve hit a rut. Everyone around you seems to be excelling yet no matter how hard you try; you just can’t seem to catch up. First and foremost, we need you to know that you’re not crazy and that these thoughts you are having have not just randomly materialized. The thoughts you are having are a product of the environment that you are in and the way that it is making you feel. At BLOSSOM, we know exactly how you feel. As you may have seen on the front page of our website, you may be dealing with a case of very annoying impostor syndrome.

The unfortunate reality of being a girl studying STEM, is that in some circumstances such as academia, there just aren’t enough of us around. And though it could be argued that whether there are girls or boys amongst your peers during a subject shouldn’t affect your personal choice, the reality is that things are not like this. Girls see themselves less represented in STEM (though there are many wonderful campaigns trying to divert this) and so may feel less inclined to choose a STEM related subject. Unfortunately, science (particularly physics) can be seen as quite a male orientated subject, so girls may dismiss it for this reason. Furthermore, there is a sort of mysticism around maths and physics, like the idea that some people are just naturally good at it (STEM isn’t a Maybelline advert – you’re not ‘born with it’). So large proportions of people – girls and boys alike – just reject it because they don’t think they are able to do it. However, this poses a great burden on girls because the fact that there are less STEM women role models seems to almost reinforce this idea based on gendered lines when it is simply not true. History and many other things are the causes of why women have been underrepresented in science and are only now slowly being given the recognition they deserve, so it is not crazy that you may be convincing yourself you might not be cut out for this when not many things around you tell you that a lot of people like you have done it. People’s unconscious biases and the height at the which the pedestal STEM subjects are put on leads to a downward spiral of it being easier than ever to convince yourself you are just not cut out for it.

Okay, we know what you’re thinking; I actually didn’t ask for a history lesson or some analysis of how people think, thank you very much, and fair enough. But at BLOSSOM, we believe that young girls get discouraged or full on drop out of doing STEM subjects because they somehow blame themselves for feelings of incompetence they may feel when studying these subjects, when the truth is that it wasn’t until very recently that they have been receiving the support that they should have gotten a long time ago, and though progress has been made there’s still a lot that needs to be done.

So in conclusion, you’re not crazy and please don’t quit. Times like this happen, but this is when you have to remind yourself why you chose these subjects to start with. Yes, you may currently only be studying for an exam but the possibilities you could unlock with the knowledge you are gaining is truly immeasurable. You could be the first person on mars, you could cure cancer, you could stop climate change. You don’t need a specific sort of brain to be good at science – that’s just nonsense. You just need to engage and persevere. All the scientific discoveries that you are learning about occurred because a human with a brain thought of them. A brain just like yours – they just had to decide what to do with it.