ECCV 2016 Daily - Thursday

ECCV Daily: Do you think some of these women drop out from the program because they have less motivation, energy, or confidence than you? Amy: Perhaps - I think part of why there tends to be more men in these classes is because at an earlier age, at least when I was in high school, it was more socially acceptable for young boys to be involved in computer science from a young age. My boyfriend has been programming since he was 9 years old. That would have never occurred to me. Growing up in Seattle, I had opportunities early on to get involved in CS if I had wanted to take advantage of them, but it never occurred to me. Not having that accumulated experience of getting your failures out of the way while you’re young and you’re not competing with 600 other students does wonders for your confidence level rather than going through those experiences during the first couple of weeks in college. ECCV Daily: You use the word confidence quite often. How important is confidence? Amy: I think it’s very important. We kind of joke at Stanford that we have this syndrome called “duck syndrome” where all the students are like ducks; on the surface they are very placid and self-confident, but under the surface they’re paddling like mad. That can be bad for mental health reasons. It has two effects to it. I think you do have to just believe in yourself, as corny as that sounds. You have to trust that through perseverance and hard work, you’ll figure it out. You can’t let a few poor grades drag you down. But everyone is paddling because you are surrounded by other brilliant, motivated students. Maybe in high school, 5% of the class was like that, but now everyone is. You’re a small fish in a big pond now as opposed to a big fish in a small pond. Women in Computer Vision 19 ECCV Daily: Thursday “Students are like ducks; on the surface they are very placid and self-confident, but under the surface they’re paddling like mad”