It’s far from abnormal to be intimidated by the STEM field and the challenges that come with it. STEM can make people feel like its driving force at times is to make you feel helpless and dumb. Many of you have probably experienced extreme frustration, while staring at the same math problem for over an hour as you’re twirling your pencil around mindlessly. STEM sometimes seems to push you to your breaking point, but it allows you to make tremendous discoveries and build powerful connections. STEM can empower you and lead to a life of success if you use its challenges as opportunities to learn and grow.
Why is STEM Scary?
Many students opt out of taking STEM classes at a very young age because they are perceived as “hard classes” or the classes that only the “smart kids” take. Furthermore, it’s not even that the students are failing STEM classes, it’s that they don’t give themselves the opportunity to excel in the field. Unfortunately, it’s not only students who shy away from immersing themselves in STEM, but teachers as well. Why are teachers scared of educating children on STEM? It’s because students, especially young children, are masters at asking numerous questions. These questions often lead to teachers feeling unprepared and ignorant about science, technology, engineering, and math. It makes them question how well they actually know the material that they are teaching.
Science Has a Right Answer
Another reason why STEM can be nerve-wracking is because there is usually a “right” way to solve a problem, in other words, there is no room for ambiguity. Therefore, because there is often a solution to the problem then there are many chances for someone to fail and come up with the wrong answer. There are not as many scenarios in STEM classes where there are multiple solutions, meaning that people are either right or wrong and there is little in the way of ambiguity. Students often beat themselves up about failing and then give up with STEM classes altogether, but it is important that anyone in STEM understands that failure is a crucial part of the learning curve.
A Field Dominated by Men
It’s a significant amount of pressure, if not terrifying, for many women to step into a field that is overflowing with men. Although women make up 54 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in the social sciences area, they only make up around 20 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in hard science majors like engineering and computer science. This drastic gender gap puts an increased amount of pressure and attention onto women when they join the STEM field. There is a lack of confidence when it comes to women in STEM because women are often pushed into “helping” professions and “easier” subjects in school. This low confidence mindset is created at an early age and discourages women from pursuing careers in more stereotypically challenging and male-dominated fields.
How to Embrace STEM
Teachers, administrators, and guardians need to be more forward to students about explaining that failure and obstacles are inevitable when it comes to STEM. They need to make it clear that it is expected and normal that students will struggle to understand complex concepts. The sooner that children understand that failure is a necessary part of learning and that some subjects are less easy to initially grasp then the better. STEM is daunting and children need to know that it is okay to be challenged by a subject, but that it is not a reason to avoid it altogether.
STEM is intimidating to a variety of people and you are not alone in thinking that it’s difficult and ambitious. It’s meant to challenge our thinking and put our brains to the test. If people can learn to embrace failure and obstacles earlier on in their lives then maybe less people will avoid STEM as early as Kindergarten. There is no denying that STEM is challenging, but that doesn’t dismiss the fact that it can’t be just as rewarding as it is challenging.
Written by: Olivia Fitzgerald
