ECCV 2016 Daily - Thursday

ECCV Daily: How many years has it been since then? Amy: I think 4 years. I decided midway through freshman year. ECCV Daily: Were there any moments in these 4 years that thought that this is not for you? Amy: At the beginning I didn’t have as much stacked up confidence from years of doing it and years of working on assignments and projects knowing that at some point you’ll always get them done. At the beginning, I was not as self- confident. I was also very grade oriented still from high school so that was discouraging when you would get a poor grade on an assignment because it’s a field that you literally just started 4 months ago, and a lot of the other students in the class have been doing it for years. I’m somewhat a perfectionist, so that was pretty difficult to get over at the beginning. ECCV Daily: When you had discouraging moments, do you think it would have been the same if you were a boy? Amy: I think everyone gets a little discouraged in Stanford CS classes at some point. Fortunately, in the intro classes, there is much more of an even gender balance because the introductory courses are very encouraging. As you start going up in the curriculum, the imbalance starts to become more apparent. You see fewer and fewer women, especially in the advanced systems classes. ECCV Daily: What makes them drop out? Amy: Some of them are more oriented to design fields and design classes so there are more women in the human/computer interaction track. ECCV Daily: What makes them more oriented to that? Amy: It might just be because there are more women in those classes. I’m taking an HCI class right now, and my section has a majority of women. Our section leader commented on it at the beginning of class because it’s so rare. I don’t think the men in the class felt uncomfortable, but they did notice their gender. Whereas, no one comments if it’s 80% men which is the general case. 18 ECCV Daily: Thursday Women in Computer Vision “You see fewer and fewer women, especially in the advanced systems classes”