At first it was exciting to be the only woman in an engineering class: Simply by existing, I was making a difference. I even found it a little funny: What are the odds that I'm the only woman in a 15-person undergraduate class at a college with 40,000 students? The funny part got old fast: the unwanted romantic advances, the assumed incompetence, the surprise at my chosen career path, the implications of not fitting in, and the implications that being a woman gave me an advantage and I hadn't actually earned my successes. By the time I got to an internship after my junior year, I wasn't surprised that the 31 other interns were men, and I wasn't surprised at what I had to put up with to be "friends" with them. I had figured out that being a "buzzkill" could be both socially and professionally detrimental, so I was used to tolerating some inappropriate conduct. Looking back, I tolerated more than I had to that summer. I had never been outnumbered that severely, and honestly, it was intimidating. I also felt pressure to be happy. I wasn't about to change my major 3 years in, and that was my only example of what an engineering job was like, so I convinced myself that the jokes were funny.
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