Asian country by the way.
In 2020, I took the university entrance exam. I studied really hard and finally got accepted into this school. I majored in civil engineering, and my school is one of the top technical universities in the country.
I thought all my efforts would finally be rewarded. But the past four years have been nothing short of hell.
I couldn’t keep up with the subjects here—not because I was bad at everything, but because I was inconsistent. The subjects I was good at, I did really well. But the ones I struggled with, I failed miserably. There were courses I retook four or five times and still couldn’t pass. Was it because I didn’t try hard enough? Every time I talked about it, my relatives would say, “You must have been slacking off. If you actually studied, you’d pass by the second or third try.” I don’t know anymore.
I was the first in my extended family to ever get into university, so I had no one to turn to for advice or guidance. During my studies, I often wondered, “Will I be able to get a job after I graduate?” “Will I even be capable of doing the job? I don’t know how to drink or network…” And those were just some of the countless worries on my mind.
Back in high school, while other girls would gather in groups and do their makeup, I’d sit quietly and study. While they secretly put on lipstick in the back of the class, I was up at the board solving equations. When I entered university, I thought I’d finally be in a freer environment where I could start taking care of my appearance. But during my first year, I wore a pair of long shorts that went down to my knees. I was about to attend my first Calculus class when the security guard stopped me at the door and scolded me loudly, saying, “You came to school dressed like that to seduce boys or what? Focus on your studies.” Meanwhile, male students were wearing soccer shorts that barely covered anything, and the school didn’t even have a uniform policy.
It stayed the same throughout the years. If I wore makeup or dressed nicely to class, I would immediately get mocked or ridiculed by the teachers:
“Whose girlfriend is this? Go teach her how to dress—this is school, not a fashion show.”
“If you dress like that at work later, don’t complain when things go wrong.”
“Trying to land an engineer boyfriend to change your life, huh?”
I was heartbroken. After 12 years of school, I thought I had finally earned the right to take care of myself. Why did I get treated like that just for wanting to feel beautiful? I still sat and studied like everyone else—what did it matter how I looked?
During my general education courses, I couldn’t make any female friends because I was very shy. The guys, of course, were also reluctant to talk to girls. I was always alone—studying, eating, revising for exams—all by myself. Even when I didn’t understand something, I was too scared to ask anyone.
It wasn’t until my second year that I made friends with an LGBT student who introduced me to their group. But that friend would often make sharp, hurtful remarks about me. I know I’m not a good student, so in class, I tried to take notes seriously. But they would mock me, saying, “What? Even you are taking notes? The world must be ending,” or when I tried solving a problem, “What the hell are you doing? All your formulas are wrong.” They never spoke like that to anyone else—just me. I felt like the clown of the group, the one everyone pointed to whenever they needed an example of someone stupid or ugly.
When I confided in my aunt and uncle—two people who’ve always been kind to me—my aunt said, “Maybe there’s something about you that causes people to act like that. If it were just one or two people avoiding you, that’d be understandable. But if everyone does, maybe the problem is you.”
Every day I had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. to eat, wash up, and get dressed. Around 5 a.m., I would catch the bus to be at school by 7. That meant four hours a day just for commuting. I’d be standing alone at the bus stop while it was still pitch dark. Back then, the buses were old and had broken air conditioning—nothing like the nicer ones now. I had heatstroke twice. The first time I just vomited, but the second time, I actually fainted on the bus. Both times, some kind workers helped me out—if it weren’t for them, I don’t know what would’ve happened.
My high school friends mostly went to private universities. They didn’t even study during senior year—they were already accepted through transcript evaluations. One friend failed the exam and also got in that way. But now, they’re both doing great. They’re being praised, winning scholarships, dressing up, and being supported by everyone around them—not ridiculed like me. Another girl I wasn’t even close to became a famous TikToker. Sometimes I’d randomly see her videos—traveling, attending events—and I’d cry so much. How come the girl who used to get scolded in class for doing makeup is now praised, earning money, and loved by so many? Meanwhile, the one who did everything society asked—who followed all the rules—ended up like this?
I feel like everything they told us was a lie. “Strong women,” “Girls can succeed in engineering”… But when I was at my lowest, who stood by me? What was my reward for everything I endured? Just these callused, rough hands from all the lab work, this damaged skin from being out in the sun, and endless ridicule from the people around me.
Every semester, I failed one or two courses. So the next semester, I’d sign up for new ones while retaking the old ones. I failed courses every term—even in the auditing semester, even during summer school—I kept taking more classes, hoping to catch up and graduate on time. In my third year, I once registered for 25 credits in a single semester. And of course, I failed many of them.
Because of that, tuition kept going up. My grandmother gave me 50 million VND to study, but I did so poorly that it ended up costing double, and my parents had to help me cover the rest.
There were times when I stood at the bus stop and silently wished a car would run into me—just so I wouldn’t have to endure this anymore. Then I’d think to myself, “Is this really a thought someone should be having while they’re still in school?” That was the last straw. I decided to stop.
2024 was supposed to be my graduation year. But I submitted a request for academic leave—and now, in 2025, I’ve officially dropped out. My current GPA is 7.33 out of 10. If I returned, it would take me four more semesters to graduate. But during my break, I saw many new aspects of life. I’ve found a different path. I just hope this time, I’ll be treated better.
Comments
And let’s not talk about how I used to carry a small compa with me so I can hid it in my pocket and stabbed myself with it so I can stay awake in classess.
It starts when we are children. Parents, grandparents, society all say ‘this is the formula: do these tasks and do them well and then you will earn our love and respect ‘. So much more so for girls than boys because, after all, ‘boys will be boys’, and somehow any transgression can be forgiven.
This is how you should dress, this is how you should behave, this is what you should study, these are the grades you should get. They all think that if you follow these instructions you will earn their love. Even they don’t realise that the real way to earn their love is by being happy and enjoying moderate success – in any field. It’s not about getting 60% at a really really really hard field like STEM, if you instead got 90% doing something super easy that will probably wind up impressing them more. That’s why the make-up girl seems happier.
It may seem like the message is ‘do what’s easiest’, but that’s not what I’m saying.
Find something that makes you happy, and fuck everyone else’s opinion. You’ve spent so many years chasing someone else’s dreams and following someone else’s formula, now it’s time to find the thing that you enjoy doing and chase it. If you enjoy it and work hard at it, you’ll find it becomes super easy.
Plus, all those years you’ve spent working super hard on really tough subjects? That will stay with you. That will help you in ways you cannot even imagine right now. Be proud of where youve gotten to, jump off this bullshit train, and chase the thing that gives you joy – whether it’s a certain kind of job, a certain type of relationship, or a certain type of hobby.
Hi, I’m a woman in STEM. Your experience is valid no matter what I’ve seen, but I’ve seen a lot of this. It’s hell.
It sounds like you’ve worked very hard and achieved a lot against adversity. It also sounds like you have found some peace away from your studies. I hope you can listen to your heart and live the life that calls to you. The system is designed to punish us for being women, made up or not. It is not failure to choose yourself in the face of such a system.
this post is a great example of structural misogyny in society; its just so much harder for women in general to get degrees for high-paying jobs
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I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but it looks like many of the things you mention are due to things other than being a woman in STEM.
First, it looks like you struggle with subjects that are of little interest to you. In my personal experience, having ADHD, it is very difficult to get through stuff that is of little interest to me. Depression or anxiety can also have this effect. Have you spoken with a professional?
It sounds like systemic sexism, and lack of advocacy on your part were the cause of many of your struggles in university. Is there no student body representatives or faculty that you could have complained to about these comments?
There is awful people everywhere, and finding a group in which you fit can be hard. You would have been better by just cutting them off than staying as friends or acquaintances. It also looks like there was an absolute awful response from your family.
Having to use public transport sucks… but such is the nature of life as a person without large means.
There is no guarantee that following all the rules others impose on you will yield any reward in the end. That is just life. People with more means and connections will always have an advantage. You are not owed anything in life, I’m sorry. Only those that want to make good for you will be guaranteed to show up in the end.
It’s not a lie that women can succeed in STEM. Girls can succeed in engineering. Many have done, and many will. Some people do have to work harder than others, and many will simply struggle because of their situation.
Trying to take on more than what you can is a recipe for disaster. If your tuition is based on credits per semester, you should only take that which you think you can handle, not try to take on all of it at once.
The expectations others and yourself set on you were too much. You tried to do more than what you can actually handle, and ended up crashing. Take care of youself, and always set adequate expectations for yourself and others.
There is nothing wrong with abandoning an unrewarding career or learning. You are your own person, and should follow your own path, whatever that is. However, never expect anything from anyone or think you are owed anything beyond basic human dignity – it will only cause you harm. Advocate for yourself, and set expectations when needed.
Overall, it seems that a lack of guidance, inexperience, going beyond your abilities, and, yes, some of the systemic sexism, were the cause for your failures and distress.
I wouldn’t put it all in the ‘scam of women in STEM’.
“This is [insert context], not a fashion show”. I have heard this exact same thing in another context. Double binds are so damn frustrating
first, i am so sorry for the difficult experiences you had; you’re right, it’s very unfair and things shouldn’t be like that.
I am hopeful that since you left school it sounds like you have discovered a lot about yourself and what makes you happy and fulfilled – hold onto that! Society may not be the way we want it to be, but they can’t take that away from you.
Your post shows structural misogyny in our world.
It even shows your own interalised misogyny.
You mention you are ‘not like like the other girls’, who apparently all put their make-up on in class. Or how other girls were too scary to talk to and make friends with.
I’m not judging you btw, you are a product of your environment.
I’m a woman in STEM and I have been for 3 decades. It’s been tough, to say he least, but I have found my way. I am doing what I am interested in and passionate about, and I stopped caring about others’ opinions. This is easier as I get older, but it’s been great self-preservation.
Do what works best for you, take the steps you need to take, to be happy. Avoid the noise as much as possible.
You sound like me when I was in undergrad. I did well for the first 1.5 years but then reality caught up. I’m fairly certain I’m on the spectrum and after college I started treatment for ADHD (though still skeptical of this diagnosis). I absolutely struggled to make any meaningful friendship in college, and it definitely wasn’t because other people weren’t trying. I have a hard time sustaining friendships especially back then, but it’s better now. Because of the loneliness, I developed depression, and then it was downhill from there. I began failing classes every semester, and every time I tried to undo it, I would just end up in a deeper hole. Not sure if I was ever on Academic probation, maybe? I did graduate but barely and with a miserable GPA. I also had some internalized misogyny. I couldn’t believe the women who were social, beautiful, and doing so much better than me academically.
In any case, after graduation I ended up with a gap year which was a nice break but not good for me because I had nothing lined up or any social group, so my depression worsened. When I went through medical school, life turned out so much better. I still struggled academically at times. I have this internal clock where after a certain period of time, I get so burned out, I feel like nothing I do helps it. The only difference was I actually had a great group of friends and support I could lean on which made a world of difference. I also lost weight, started doing my make up and hair, and dressing better, so in general people started treating me better which made my confidence grow. To be clear, I don’t think you need to do those things I mentioned, but I also stopped giving a fuck. I enjoyed putting on make up, so if I got any comment which rarely happened, I let that shit roll off my back.
Now I’m in residency in my last year growing absolutely restless but doing ok because I know what to look out for. As cliche as it is, I absolutely recommend seeing your doctor and therapist.
I don’t know if this helps but when I was struggling a lot academically during college, I discovered I could get validation on other stuff. I would never be the best student or programmer, but I could win Hackathons, land cool internships and lead student projects really well. I tried to focus on that stuff and just get through the courses. Also, whenever a professor was sexist towards me, I tried to confide on other female students to not feel so alone. I don’t know where your path will take you now you’re out of university, but my advice is to get involved in stuff you care about/is good at, and ask women around you for help whenever you can. I hope everything works out for you!
It’s very unfair that you were treated so badly simply because you are a young woman. That’s its own terrible thing.
I’m going to address the inconsistency since it sounds like you are a very hard worker that is not afraid to study a lot. If at all possible you might try to be tested for learning disabilities. If you are intelligent and a hard worker but have a learning disability it can affect how well you do in a particular school subject.
I can tell how important doing your best is to you. It would be useful to know if you have a specific challenge and how to handle it.
>But when I was at my lowest, who stood by me?
You may not want to initially hear this, but you stood by you. It’s when you give up on yourself you truly have problems. In Buddhism there is a teaching where you radiate positive emotions out from you for you first, then out to others. One of the four abodes is compassion. There’s a form of self-compassion where you care about yourself and take care of yourself when you’re hurting. Because while it’s wonderful to get support and be the one to support others, that isn’t a guarantee in life. The only guarantee is that you can be there for you. You can care about you. You can take care of yourself. You can cheer yourself up. Don’t ever forget that you have that power of positivity. Give yourself that gift. You deserve it.
>I couldn’t keep up with the subjects here—not because I was bad at everything, but because I was inconsistent. The subjects I was good at, I did really well. But the ones I struggled with, I failed miserably.
Same thing happened to me. I learned there are some teaching styles I’m very good with and other teaching styles I’m very bad with. For those classes I read the text book and got better results but I quickly learned there are text book teaching styles I’m very good and very bad at, so I found other books on the topic and studied on my own, then tested out.
Part of the issue for me is there was some classes without multiple professors. Throughout college I’d choose professors that matched my learning style. It wasn’t until I hit a class with only one professor and with a learning style I didn’t grok. I was also deeply anxious of the guy, which didn’t help.
I had to learn to develop my own note taking style from text books to really ace them, and I also had to focus on dependency chains while learning quite a bit. By that I mean more advanced topics build on previous topics, so if I don’t perfectly know those previous topics learning the more advanced topic goes in one ear and out another. Sometimes an advanced topic requires knowledge that wasn’t taught in the previous class. The professor missed it or thought it wasn’t relevant. So I’d do a lot of going back into previous classes and learning everything flawlessly, even when I previously got an A in that class, just to make sure my foundation was spotless. Then from there I’d learn the more advanced topic.
Of all the classes I took, the first two chapters of Discrete Mathematics, called logic and proofs, helped me the most. I started seeing that a lot of authors of text books were using some variation of logic to structure how conveyed knowledge. Once I was able to empathize with the author’s teaching style and I know why they were choosing to write a malformed sentence that way, it clicked. Learning became massively easier.
I went from struggling with undergrad to doing the MIT challenge, which is taking 4 years of MIT CS classes in one year under self study and then testing out. Only a few people have succeeded at the MIT challenge back when it was a thing. It’s a very high achievement. It shows what a bit of meta-learning can do.
>“Whose girlfriend is this? Go teach her how to dress—this is school, not a fashion show.”
I got something similar. Professors assumed I was the girlfriend of the student sitting next to me. XD
I never took offense to it or let it bother me, and I’m glad I did, because life is too short to be stressed out all the time. Sometimes you’ve got more important things to worry about.
>Every semester, I failed one or two courses. So the next semester, I’d sign up for new ones while retaking the old ones.
My advice, is to get a tutor. Self-study, the way I did it, is great too, but a tutor can help tons, because they provide a different teaching style. You don’t have to learn from the professor or the book if both don’t work. You can pay a tutor to teach you the material in a way you’ve never thought about it before. They can also identify missing prerequisites you have holding you back, and they can teach you those prerequisites. Seriously, get a tutor.
>2024 was supposed to be my graduation year. But I submitted a request for academic leave—and now, in 2025, I’ve officially dropped out.
Oh dear. My condolences.
When I studied physics, it was winter and I wore boots with heels one day. A guy commented that I would stand out with these and would not fit to other physics students if I wear stuff like that. What a retard.
I eventually dropped out a semester later because I failed all my exams. Four years later, I got my bachelor’s degree in computer science, and I often wear fancy stuff and makeup. Just to show people you can look fancy and study STEM stuff at the same time. Because once a friend told me she overheard her boss saying about a now employee ‘if she has nails like that she can’t be good in programming.’
Since then, I started using nail polish more often, just in case I have to show these judgy people my middle fingers. That shy women see me and feel encouraged to wear what they actually want. You’re good, and you’re important. And failing exams does not make you stupid or weak.
Hi asian here and I honestly really hate so many aspects of our culture. You’re right. I wouldnt stay there either.
r/womenintech
“The rules” for any culture are always a bit of a lie at best. Luck/timing/chance plays such an astronomical role in the courses of our lives, but lucky people rarely understand their luck privilege and typically are convinced that they’re special and did “the right thing”.
This is not to say that luck is the only thing that matters, far from it… but the narrative that “if you work hard, you will succeed” is patently false.