Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Class of Boys!!!!!!!!
Recently I took a look back at my life…the whole quarter of a century that it has been (actually I’m older than that but I have “poetic” license). How it came about is that I had a lot of time on my hands while I was away on this two-day training at IIM-Indore. I walked into class on Monday morning only to realize that it had happened again….yet again….one more time…. I was the only female in the entire classroom.
The realization took my thoughts back to school 10 years ago (now THAT makes me sound old). As it would happen, we all had to choose some class for SUPW (that’s short for Some Useful Periods Wasted). Some of my friends chose Dance. I quickly struck the option out or else I would have been a more renowned name than Sunny Deol in that field. Some others opted for Music. I decided to do humanity yet another favour and drop the idea since I had already been declared unfit for bathroom singing by my family. Art was another possibility if only it hadn’t been for the fact that the teacher was scared of me. I wouldn’t blame him. He’d wasted a lot of his time and effort to figure out what similarity the blot on my sheet had to the Taj Mahal. But it’s not my fault either….he shouldn’t have made me draw it 10 times.
To cut a long story short, I ended up taking a class called clay modeling. That put me in class full of boys who had been taking the same course for the past 3 years. I can still remember them jumping gleefully at the site of the tub filled with wet clay. Our teacher gave us a topic for the day and left the class to go back to the main building to escape the heat of the asbestos roofed workshop. The moment he left all hell broke loose. Apparently wild boys running behind each other with clay in their hands, chunks of clay being thrown at the ceiling fan etc were a tradition in the class. This went on till 10 minutes before the class had to end. Then everyone got to serious work. My nice friends not only finished their own work but also helped me finish mine. The routine continued for the whole year. Week after week, hands smeared to the elbow with clay, aprons posing serious challenge to moms and surf we all worked on. Some weeks I managed to get better grades than most of the boys who’d actually made most of my model…..but they didn’t mind. That’s something I’ll never see when I’m with women L
Next year, I ended up being the only girl in Dramatics Club. The club had a tough time trying to find plays with single female characters because I found it tough to play Juliet, her mother, her maid etc. It was too much of running around behind the scenes.
I went on to engineering college. There were enough girls in class I thought my lonely days were over. As luck would have it, we got divided into groups for our lab classes…and yes…..you guessed it….I was the only girl. On the eve of the lab class, I was surprised by the unexpectedly high number of telephone calls I had received while I went out for my evening walk. Excited to think that it was some secret admirer, I waited for the next call. It turned out to be my classmate who wanted to borrow my lab record so as to copy it for class next day. I asked him why he’d called me. What I gathered eventually was that the girls always prepared the lab report and the boys faithfully copied it over. It was “tradition”. I apologized to him for being unaware of this tradition and thanked him for reminding me that I had to write my lab report before I went off to search for someone in hostel who could help me out. But at least the boys in my group gave up banking on me to be ready with the record every week.
MBA was a different story altogether. I deliberately opted for classes like Operations Management, Management Science Applications etc. which involved calculations and programming just to show I was as good as the guys. I was working on the assumption that being the teacher’s pet would get me a decent grade. I managed to scrape through with a B-. I have redefined “decent grade” ever since.
That brings us to the present. I joined my job last year. We are a batch of 14 MBAs. 12 boys and 2 girls….close shave I should say.
Then I went for this training at IIM-I and to yet another class full of men.
But things have changed. Now I’m not with a class full of boys who are close friends. In fact, I’m not in a class of boys. They are sophisticated men who are senior executives in their organizations. They treat me like a lady. I too have grown up. Wherever I go I have to be conscious of my own image and that of the organization I work for.
As I ponder more, I realize something else. While in school I ended up being the only female in a class by choice, college & work were different. Then it finally hits me: It really is a man’s world. The women here have to learn to be alone.
¶ 6:21 AM 
Recently I took a look back at my life…the whole quarter of a century that it has been (actually I’m older than that but I have “poetic” license). How it came about is that I had a lot of time on my hands while I was away on this two-day training at IIM-Indore. I walked into class on Monday morning only to realize that it had happened again….yet again….one more time…. I was the only female in the entire classroom.
The realization took my thoughts back to school 10 years ago (now THAT makes me sound old). As it would happen, we all had to choose some class for SUPW (that’s short for Some Useful Periods Wasted). Some of my friends chose Dance. I quickly struck the option out or else I would have been a more renowned name than Sunny Deol in that field. Some others opted for Music. I decided to do humanity yet another favour and drop the idea since I had already been declared unfit for bathroom singing by my family. Art was another possibility if only it hadn’t been for the fact that the teacher was scared of me. I wouldn’t blame him. He’d wasted a lot of his time and effort to figure out what similarity the blot on my sheet had to the Taj Mahal. But it’s not my fault either….he shouldn’t have made me draw it 10 times.
To cut a long story short, I ended up taking a class called clay modeling. That put me in class full of boys who had been taking the same course for the past 3 years. I can still remember them jumping gleefully at the site of the tub filled with wet clay. Our teacher gave us a topic for the day and left the class to go back to the main building to escape the heat of the asbestos roofed workshop. The moment he left all hell broke loose. Apparently wild boys running behind each other with clay in their hands, chunks of clay being thrown at the ceiling fan etc were a tradition in the class. This went on till 10 minutes before the class had to end. Then everyone got to serious work. My nice friends not only finished their own work but also helped me finish mine. The routine continued for the whole year. Week after week, hands smeared to the elbow with clay, aprons posing serious challenge to moms and surf we all worked on. Some weeks I managed to get better grades than most of the boys who’d actually made most of my model…..but they didn’t mind. That’s something I’ll never see when I’m with women L
Next year, I ended up being the only girl in Dramatics Club. The club had a tough time trying to find plays with single female characters because I found it tough to play Juliet, her mother, her maid etc. It was too much of running around behind the scenes.
I went on to engineering college. There were enough girls in class I thought my lonely days were over. As luck would have it, we got divided into groups for our lab classes…and yes…..you guessed it….I was the only girl. On the eve of the lab class, I was surprised by the unexpectedly high number of telephone calls I had received while I went out for my evening walk. Excited to think that it was some secret admirer, I waited for the next call. It turned out to be my classmate who wanted to borrow my lab record so as to copy it for class next day. I asked him why he’d called me. What I gathered eventually was that the girls always prepared the lab report and the boys faithfully copied it over. It was “tradition”. I apologized to him for being unaware of this tradition and thanked him for reminding me that I had to write my lab report before I went off to search for someone in hostel who could help me out. But at least the boys in my group gave up banking on me to be ready with the record every week.
MBA was a different story altogether. I deliberately opted for classes like Operations Management, Management Science Applications etc. which involved calculations and programming just to show I was as good as the guys. I was working on the assumption that being the teacher’s pet would get me a decent grade. I managed to scrape through with a B-. I have redefined “decent grade” ever since.
That brings us to the present. I joined my job last year. We are a batch of 14 MBAs. 12 boys and 2 girls….close shave I should say.
Then I went for this training at IIM-I and to yet another class full of men.
But things have changed. Now I’m not with a class full of boys who are close friends. In fact, I’m not in a class of boys. They are sophisticated men who are senior executives in their organizations. They treat me like a lady. I too have grown up. Wherever I go I have to be conscious of my own image and that of the organization I work for.
As I ponder more, I realize something else. While in school I ended up being the only female in a class by choice, college & work were different. Then it finally hits me: It really is a man’s world. The women here have to learn to be alone.
