Words matter. These are the best Eileen Pollack Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
My parents didn’t know how to provide me with the encouragement I needed to achieve my dreams.
When I was in seventh grade, I was bored out of my mind. We seemed to be learning the same things over and over in science and math, and two of the boys in my class were allowed to move ahead into these advanced classes, but I wasn’t allowed because I was a girl.
If a female student wants to drop a physics course, no one questions her, but if a male student tries to drop it, he will get pushback and encouraged to stay in, since he will need it later in life.
If you’re a white male growing up in this society, you’re constantly receiving encouragement to go on in science in the form of all the images that you’re receiving.
When I left Yale, it was so painful to me. I had worked so hard, gotten so far, and just walked away.
When I was in 7th grade, we were all given an exam. It was science and math, and the boys who did well were skipped ahead so that when they got to be juniors or seniors in high school they would be able to go to the local community college and take calculus and physics there. And I wasn’t skipped ahead.
I was nearly as far behind in calculus as I was in physics. But I wasn’t the only woman in the class, so I felt more comfortable asking questions.
I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.
If a person’s self-worth derives from being the only woman in the field, how much affection can she feel toward another woman who might challenge that claim to fame?
If there’s a stereotype that you’re not supposed to be good at something, that still gets so badly in your way of concentrating.
Many of my friends are scientists.
Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don’t in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off.
I think women need to hear more encouragement in any field, because I see it – I teach creative writing. And even though it’s mostly women in the room, they’re not often – or they didn’t used to be the ones who went on to publish books. I know this sounds like a tautology, but encouragement is the key.
Judging the political climate in my state by walking around lefty Ann Arbor is like a polar bear judging global warming by staring at the ice cube beneath its feet.
Writers find common ground not through the homelands they once inhabited but the thematic questions with which they grapple.
I don’t usually feel threatened by the militias. Most members are just indulging their fantasies of being warriors without having to sign up for the Army. They want to be heroes and save their neighbors from disaster.
As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, I developed crushes on nearly all my male professors.
In America, nobody’s boyfriend wants them to be smarter than he is, and no one wants to admit it.
To make computer science more attractive to women, we might help young women change how they think about themselves and what’s expected of them. But we might also diversify the images of scientists they see in the media, along with the decor in the classrooms and offices in which they might want to study or work.
For the individual and for society, the more diversity you have in a field means more ways of solving a problem as well as more creativity and originality.
Science and math are hard for everybody, and it’s usually not a matter or being born gifted at it or not. It’s hard work, but it can be a lot of fun!
We still raise girls to look to other people for assurance they are attractive and smart, while boys are raised to determine their own value. Many girls are still made to feel it’s not feminine to be good at science or math.
We forget how recently astronomers figured out what the stars are made of, what makes them shine, how distant they are, how they are born, and whether they remain immutable or evolve and die.
The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.
All the societal pressures that make girls feel as if they’re too smart, especially in the sciences – ‘No one will date them. They won’t be popular.’ – don’t apply to boys. The boys are being encouraged.
