How An Early Gender Bias Shaped My Nontraditional Career Journey: A Reflection

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on my formative years as a young woman, a common experience for those of us approaching midlife and the midpoints in our careers. Questions about how I arrived at this point, where I am headed, and how I can contribute blend with memories of early successes, failures, awkward moments, and particularly the mentors, coaches, and role models who shaped my path. In our professional lives, some of these figures influenced us in less positive ways. Many of us, especially those who identify as women, likely have similar stories to the one I’m about to share.

During most of my early education, I participated in talented and gifted programs, which many public schools have since eliminated. As even a very young student, I completed assignments quickly and grew bored while reading, drawing, or assisting teachers with classroom tasks. By first grade, I began leaving the main classroom two days a week to join other “TAG” kids, all of us reading at advanced levels and exhibiting varying degrees of social awkwardness. These classes were a blessing for my active mind. We read and performed Shakespeare, painted with oil paints instead of tempera, tackled complex math problems, and engaged in “scenario work,” which involved learning about current events, history, and solving intricate problems. I adored and relished those two afternoons each week.

By eighth grade, my academic tastes had shifted more towards the creative arts and history, and I wasn’t as proficient in math. However, I developed a fascination with psychology and the human condition. Luckily, my junior high had a popular psychology class that had a waitlist every year. Oddly enough, this class was taught by a strict but warm teacher in her fifties, rumored to be a former Playboy Bunny. The thought of this conservative-looking woman as a pinup was entertaining to think about (especially for a bunch of 13 and 14-year-old kids), but not nearly as fun, challenging, and thought-provoking as the class. I remember thinking that I may want to become a psychologist, without fully knowing the breadth of what that meant.

Like at most schools, the yearly science fair was a staple, albeit one I usually avoided participating in. Intimidated by what I thought to be the complex experiments and hypotheses of my more STEM-oriented classmates, I felt I had little to offer. However, the allegedly-former-Playboy bunny psychology teacher also explored social science topics like music and art therapy, which sparked my curiosity: What happens to our bodies when we view art we love or listen to our favorite music? I was already deeply obsessed with art, and my best friend and I visited our local art museum weekly, often to admire just one or two paintings. Music, too, seemed like a form of magic at that age to me (still does). Inspired by how blissful I felt while looking at a Monet painting or listening to my favorite Tori Amos album (I know that one ages me), I wondered if listening to our preferred music lowered our blood pressure and induced calm, while listening to music we didn’t like?raised our blood pressure and caused stress. This question consumed my thoughts, prompting me to enter the science fair for the first time since fifth grade.

I designed an experiment where different people (my mom, dad, sister, and best friend) listened to their favorite song, least favorite song, and what I thought to be a neutral song (Debussy’s "Clair de Lune"). My sister chose REM for her favorite and heavy metal for her least. My dad picked the Eagles for his favorite and rap music for his least. My mother chose Barbra Streisand for her favorite and also heavy metal for her least. My best friend chose Nirvana for her favorite and country music for her least. I used my mom’s blood pressure monitor to measure their blood pressure and pulse rates while they listened to the various songs. After the music was over, I wrote down their facial expressions, their reflections afterward ("How did you feel when the guitars got really loud?" "What was your emotion?"), and other observations in a little spiral-bound notebook.?

My hypothesis was pretty straightforward: listening to favorite music would lower blood pressure, while listening to least favorite music would raise it. The control song should create no change from the baseline. Although my sample size was small (only four people), and the experiment wasn’t highly sophisticated, I was proud of it and pleased with the results. I created a neat poster and made the blood pressure monitor, some CDs, and my DiscMan available for anyone interested in trying out the experiment who came to my spot (oh, to have had access to Spotify back then!). I remember waiting proudly, wearing one of my favorite outfits, my hair curled, and some of my sister’s lipstick freshly applied. I was so excited to share my research.

The main judge was a science teacher known for his charismatic and sarcastic manner. When he reached my station, he asked me to explain my project, method, and results. On one corner of the poster was a photo of me during the experiment, smiling at the camera while taking my sister’s blood pressure. Her eyes were closed, and she wore headphones, listening to her favorite song. I smiled broadly and proudly in the photo, my excitement radiating out of the image. After my well-rehearsed presentation, he looked at me coldly, jabbed his pencil at the photo, and said, “Well, at least you’re photogenic,” before walking away.

Was he maybe just a jerk? Or was he biased? Regardless of unintentional or intentional, it certainly felt like he was both. Whether or not he responded the way he did because I was a girl, I internalized the rejection and dismissal of my effort deeply. I was heartbroken. That was it. No ribbon. No placement. No comments or critiques of my work. Just that brusque dismissal and a back-handed compliment about my appearance. The fact that I had experimented in something as complex as physiology and raised questions about human behavioral responses to external stimuli to something as dynamic and abstract as music taste didn't impress the judge. I felt like something less than. Not worthy of a notice beyond the superficial. The impact of that wasn't lost to me at thirteen years old, nor is it now. ?

It’s no surprise that I shied away from pushing myself too hard in science classes after that night. I felt so crushed and embarrassed that I didn’t share what happened with anyone. For a long time, I thought my research really wasn't that great, so I hid what I thought was my failure away in my heart. I told myself I wasn't cut out for science. My grades in math and science slipped, except for the psychology class. That was a glimmer.

After the science fair, I tore up the poster and the photograph, went home, and started focusing entirely on the creative arts, which offered a more immediate affirmation of my talents. I wrote, painted, sang, and danced, and ended up becoming a successful, competitive, and disciplined young performer. I claimed to have no interest in science.

It wasn’t until two decades later, when I was a non-traditional student— a mother in my early thirties, having been a stay-at-home mom for most of my adult life—attending the University of Tennessee that I realized a potentially bigger impact of that teacher’s disservice. One day, a professor in a large psychology class mentioned music and art therapy and their effects on stress and anxiety. I remembered my eighth-grade experiment. Sitting in the lecture hall, I searched “effects of favorite music on heart rate and blood pressure” in the university's research databases and found hundreds of studies. Although these experiments were of course more rigorous and organized than mine from the eighth-grade science fair, they contained similar elements and questions. Their hypotheses and conclusions aligned with my own. One study even used Debussy.?

Instead of feeling vindicated, I felt deeply saddened. That thoughtless comment clouded my self-efficacy for a long time and malformed my self-worth. What's worse, I had allowed it to, forever linking my value to my appearance beginning at such a tender age. I also felt pity for that teacher and his small-mindedness, which led him to belittle a teenage girl. I came to the personal conclusion that his wasn’t even an unconscious bias, it was a loud and proud one.?I remembered how he had engaged with the boys at the fair, clapping their backs and asking serious questions. One boy, wearing a lab coat and carrying a clipboard, won the science fair that year with an experiment that was the equivalent of letting two oranges grow moldy. No shade to lab coat kid, but his work wasn't the most groundbreaking or well thought out of the bunch.

In the end, science, in the form of social science,?finally found me again, albeit in a nontraditional way (of course).?While I started my university studies at eighteen as a theatre major, when I returned in my early thirties I chose American Studies with an emphasis on anthropology (the science of humanity). A few years after graduating, I completed a Master of Science in Educational Psychology with a focus on adult development and learning. Today, I stand at the midpoint of my career employed as an educational psychologist working in industry. Every day, I apply a combination of the study of culture, humanity, behavior, learning, and development to help people and organizations. Don't get me wrong, I am deeply grateful for my nontraditional journey. I am even, in a way, grateful to that dismissive teacher. Sometimes those who teach us exactly what kind of role models we don’t want to be are just as, maybe even more so, influential to us than the positive ones.

My only regret is that I didn’t recognize my worth sooner and that I didn’t keep that photo of me standing by my research. I'm not sure what happened to the DiscMan, or to lab coat kid.