I am displeased with how our Physics Department has served me. Not in that it had bad intentions or treated me with disrespect, but it failed to teach me what it means to do physics. Specifically, I am unhappy with the Physics
In academia these days, it is hard to escape the seemingly stagnant binary set up between STEM and the humanities. For many people, committing to one of these worlds feels like a departure from the other in such a way that renders
The number of Swarthmore seniors graduating with degrees in English has dropped significantly over the last several decades, while a growing number of students are choosing to major in STEM disciplines, particularly computer science. In 1992, 62 Swarthmore seniors, nearly 17 percent
Note on the Title The second symbol in the title is an “epsilon.” It sounds Greek. It sounds geek! It’s both. I first encountered this symbol in a Paul Erdős biography, because he used to refer to children as “epsilons.” Cute. Epsilons
In my previous piece, I outlined this pervasive feeling of being <, this mix of imposter syndrome, stereotype threat, and my own insecurities blended together in a, to say mildly, unappetizing concoction. Since then, I’ve spent the past month interviewing four mathematics
When I was young, probably 4th grade or so, my mother told me I wasn’t a “S.T.E.M. person.” My mother is a person who believes in excellence; she believes there is little point to working in a field in which you will
I have been asking myself since elementary school: Why are there so few women in science, technology, engineering, and math? Women and non-binary people do not get enough support and encouragement from their peers, institutions, and communities. I believe that we should
The humanities — defined as the “big four” of English, languages, philosophy, and history — are in decline. Intellectuals and the public have been warning about this shift for decades and have pushed a wide variety of explanations for the decline: ballooning
According to a Swarthmore Institutional Research compilation of the class of 2018, four different popular majors have a disproportionate amount of students identifying as men. These statistics do not come as a surprise to many female Swarthmore students in these fields. Many
It’s September of 2018, and I am officially a junior at Swat. I feel a little queasy just seeing that in writing honestly. Being a junior in college always seemed like that thing my friends who are now graduates would be (I