Before starting with art&design I studied 1 semester of telematics. I thought to tell why I was quitting this study, because often when I think back I’m wondering where I would be now, had I continued pursuing this career path.
Dropping out after semester technical university
Freshly graduated from a humanistic-specialized high school without explicit tech knowledge than the standard school science classes I wanted to follow a career path working with computers, networks and coding, with the dream of designing the future of the internet of things. Arriving at my first classes I was confronted with lecture theaters filled with mostly male students that already graduated from engineer’s colleges and alike. Most first year’s papers were really easy for them and most of them knew each other already as it seemed everyone from the engineering colleges just went straight on into this course, lived in the same dorm and were not eager to get to know other people. All teachers and tutors were male and there were only a handful of girls, which seemed to be lone warriors as well, but with much more tech experience than me.
I did enjoy tutorials and did also quite well with programming but since I had no real connection to peers I did not really study too well for more difficult papers like electrical engineering or calculus and had given up already as most other students were quite competitive and had an attitude of “answering only one question” regarding an assignment so I lost my motivation more and more every week, receiving low or failing grades (which I was not used to from high school), and got the feeling I could never catch up with the others. More important, I developed the belief I did not want to catch up with the others at all anymore, since I felt I would not want to adopt this exclusive “techie vibe” of others, and did not see me fit in the role description of the telematics engineer at all.
I quit with the study after one semester, just collected a few credits above the minimum necessary hours of study for family allowance and went on.
What could have been done?
There were two main factors that kept me from finding motivation to continue this study.
1 — My prior education
Even though I loved learning programming I would always be way behind my peers, and derogatory comments after exams like “Haha, you really didn’t know the wave length of sun light?” by fellow students did not really help. I would have needed to study harder than others, perhaps even over summer but I didn’t have enough resources to prepare and also did not expect that the learning curve would be so steep. Perhaps tutors could have offered extra tutorials for non-engineering-school students, but I did not even know whether I was the only person with that lack of background. I could have communicated that in the newsgroups that the course was using as a forum, but coming straight from high school I felt quite overwhelmed, and did not get the feeling I could approach professors/tutors with personal issues. I could have asked for help, but it would have been easier if such issues were addressed in class — I felt like the only one having this issue but I guess more people must have dropped out with similar struggles.
2 — the role model of this career
There were maximum 3 girls per 100 students and this was quite intimidating (at the age of 18). Even though I am generally skeptical towards gender-restricted groups perhaps a “girls in 1st year tech uni” meetup would have helped to come over this bias. Definitely the presence of at least one female professor or tutor would have not given me the feeling I would naively invade a male-dominated domain, with less knowledge than the average first year student. However at that time “females into tech” was being promoted in high schools I did not see much of these efforts continuing in higher education.
Probably not feeling in the right place at all I did not feel motivated to ask how to catch up with the more experienced students and this demotivation made me change universities after just one trimester — even though I am still highly interested in this field today.