Lydia O'Lydia, Ph.D.

I was promoted a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, into a technical field from sales. Apparently I did such a good job reorganizing and streamlining my company’s quoting system that they want me to take it over completely. This is both astonishing and worrisome. I have never considered myself terribly astute in technical subjects, being a girl and all. However, as some of my readers may know, I have an overblown sense of my own potential. I have never, not once in my life, thought to myself “That is over my head and I could never comprehend / do it.” This is sheer folly, and gets me into trouble from time to time, but life would be no fun without occasionally diving head first into the unknown, damning the consequences. I am naturally reckless, and I like me that way.

I work for a company that has been in existence, in one form or another, for over twenty years. It is a forge facility, well-known and respected in the aerospace industry, that manufactures blades and vanes for turbine engine applications for users like Boeing, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, and General Electric. It is non-union, as it has been for ten years or so, and the employees are, by and large, fairly bright individuals with unavoidable proletariat mentalities and no spokesperson. Not surprisingly, almost all of them are male and white, and have been throughout the company’s history (we have one brown man working third shift and one other full time woman, who works final inspection).

I am neither particularly male, nor particularly white. I am only mostly white. But my point is this: I am the first woman to ever break into a technical position in this company.

This is a ridiculous amount of pressure. Believe you me, I have scrounged every book I could find on relevant subjects and spend hours and hours of my free time studying. I pore over the driest text I have ever read on the subject of manufacturing processes and materials on my lunch break. I study the minutiae of blueprints and try to apply what I have learned to establish a working process (saw, deburr, glass lube, extrude, coin, trim, FPI, sonic inspect, etc.) and determine how much it will cost while examining all risk factors associated with manufacturing the part and how they will impact future profitability. While training to take on this new position, I am training other people to take over my old position; when not doing this, I put out corporate fires and pacify angry customers with hastily learned diplomacy. Exciting stuff.

How did this happen? Never in my young life did I ever think I would either be doing what I do, or working so hard at it. What do I have to prove, and to whom do I want to prove it?

When I’m not studying subjects related to my job, I read “The Age of Faith” by Will Durant, part of a twelve book series on the history of the (mostly Western) world. It is five inches thick, and I have about three inches to go. I really, truly enjoy his writing. I have always loved history, especially Medieval Europe and the Middle East from 300 A.D. to 1300 A.D. But I still have to wonder if there is some ulterior motive lurking deep in my psyche. Am I just trying to impress someone?

What’s a girl who was born with above average intelligence and below average opportunity to do (the mean IQ is 100 – think about that for a moment and then get in your car, merge on to the nearest freeway, and be very afraid)? I love to learn, and greedily snatch up every opportunity that comes along to do so. But more than that, I want People to classify me as a nerd. I have to shush the little girl inside of me so often, when she tries to pipe up and say “Pay attention to me! I’m smart too, really I am!” Instead of letting her speak, I channel her into a pretentious writing style and self-aggrandizement. Ultimately, my strategy backfires.

Given my choice, I would pursue a Ph.D. Extra letters after my name would, I think, assuage the inner child desperate to be noticed, and would give me an excuse to write pretentious, dry papers all day long. Maybe then, everyone would know that I am not just a girl, but one with a sharp mind and the degrees to prove it. But this would only be an exercise in proving to People what I already know. And so I will be an armchair scholar, and occasionally I will have an opportunity to speak up and prove that I know what I am talking about. Unfortunately, it is just not as much fun to impress just myself. It is as lonely as throwing a party for yourself. People will come, but mostly just for the free booze.