On the first day of shopping period, I went to six different classes. Three of them were language classes, which I tell myself I enjoy, and two were math classes, which I am generally advised to avoid. But do I enjoy the math classes, you may ask? That, I cannot answer. I might. It is possible. We will find out. Should you try something like this yourself? Conventional wisdom would say no. Monday was a challenge, and I truly thank the Yale Hospitality gods for the takeout boxes that allowed me to eat lentil bobotie while hiding in the back of a linear algebra class. But such a challenge could be worth it. Consider the following:
The new year might be a good time to try new things. It's cliche. That doesn't mean it's entirely wrong. Any opportunity to push yourself has the potential to become a good thing. The new thing I tried was writing a profile of a professor, which you are about to read if you want to pass from the "bad example" portion of this article to the "good advice" part. With the freedom to choose any professor on this large, star-studded campus, only one person popped into my mind -- Yale School of Management assistant professor of Organizational Behavior Adriana Germano.
Recently, I read Yale Insights' coverage of Germano's research on the causes of occupational segregation. Germano's team wanted to investigate the reasons behind gender gaps in STEM-based occupations. They found that the "follow your passions" narrative, the common message that people ought to let what they love, or think they love, drive their major life choices, can contribute to differences in the rates at which women and men choose STEM majors or career paths. Women who are exposed to this narrative, her research found, are less likely to select majors or careers in male-dominated STEM fields like engineering and computer science.
I thought her research was fascinating, and I wanted to learn more about the influences that had shaped her research questions, methods and overall motivations. I discovered that Professor Adriana Germano is a person of many interests. Germano got her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida. Though she majored in photography, she took lots of astronomy classes, motivated by her experience seeing Saturn through a telescope while on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Then, in her senior year, Germano took a fateful sculpture class where she witnessed the effects of her designs on human behavior.
The class sparked her interest in psychology, leading her to enroll in a post-baccalaureate psychology program at Columbia University. At Columbia, she was inspired by a class in cultural psychology, which taught her about the strong influence of cultural contexts on people's choices. The epiphanies she experienced in the class drove her to join a research lab and pursue a Ph.D. in psychology.
At the Yale School of Management, Germano conducts research in social psychology. Her research is driven by a desire to push forward on the kind of compelling questions about social inequality that might generate useful findings about how to improve society, or might simply uncover further potentially fruitful lines of research, but either way are worth pursuing.
Germano shared with me additional insights on the mechanisms behind gendered inequality of profession and wages, which illuminated more causality than I had initially understood from reading. When women are instead encouraged to prioritize practicality or financial stability, the gendered discrepancies in career paths decrease. This phenomenon occurs, Germano explains, because being encouraged to look inside yourself to find your passions leads individuals to draw on socialized, gendered parts of the identity they have constructed under society's influence.
Reading about Germano's research is, frankly, unsettling. Many of us like to think that we are pursuing our interests, that we ought to pursue our interests or at the very least that we know what our interests are. Confronting just how much our surroundings influence our conceptions of ourselves is frightening, but can be useful for us to consider while making big decisions.
Germano doesn't think that her research should influence people not to follow their passions -- after all, your passions are still part of you. But she does think people should question their assumptions about what those passions are. Trying new courses in school, or different roles in the professional world, can help us expand our skills and interests rather than limiting ourselves because of what we think we are interested in or capable of.
Outside of her research, Germano models her own advice with a diverse and expanding set of hobbies. Last year, she challenged herself to learn the piano, and she found the experience transformed how she consumes music. This year, she hopes to learn how to surf and return to her former hobby of horseback riding. These challenges make sense for someone who has learned the importance of trying things you might not have expected to like -- and can offer some inspiration for the rest of us.
Am I being pushed away from STEM classes because I feel like I ought to pursue my passions, or what I'm good at, rather than what would be practical? Honestly, my circumstances seem to be almost totally opposite this paradigm. As someone who is more than slightly pre-law, I have been encouraged for reasons of GPA to avoid taking classes that are difficult but do not contribute directly to the trajectory I am supposed to be on. Some of those who know me, and therefore understand that I would be more likely to take multivariable calculus to go down the path of math and philosophy rather than applied physics, also encourage me to keep my feet planted in the realm of the practical rather than the abstract -- by not taking math classes I technically don't need to engage in.
Even before I heard Germano's advice, I was inclined to think that I didn't necessarily know what I liked in advance of trying it. I can list my attributes, habits and things that qualify as my interests, but none of that convincingly explains why I should or shouldn't enjoy math. I might. I might not. Hopefully by the end of shopping period I'll be able to decide. But for now, after learning about Adriana Germano, I feel like I have at least one more convincing reason to keep pushing myself to find out.