Quotes from Eileen Pollack

When I was in seventh grade, I was bored out of my mind. We seemed to be learning the same things over and over in science and math, and two of the boys in my class were allowed to move ahead into these advanced classes, but I wasn't allowed because I was a girl.

If you're a white male growing up in this society, you're constantly receiving encouragement to go on in science in the form of all the images that you're receiving.

Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don't in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off.

I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.

When I left Yale, it was so painful to me. I had worked so hard, gotten so far, and just walked away.

As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, I developed crushes on nearly all my male professors.

In America, nobody's boyfriend wants them to be smarter than he is, and no one wants to admit it.

To make computer science more attractive to women, we might help young women change how they think about themselves and what's expected of them. But we might also diversify the images of scientists they see in the media, along with the decor in the classrooms and offices in which they might want to study or work.

If a female student wants to drop a physics course, no one questions her, but if a male student tries to drop it, he will get pushback and encouraged to stay in, since he will need it later in life.

All the societal pressures that make girls feel as if they're too smart, especially in the sciences - 'No one will date them. They won't be popular.' - don't apply to boys. The boys are being encouraged.

When you have different kinds of scientific and mathematical minds approaching problems, you will get more solutions. This leads to more innovation and more creative design.

For the individual and for society, the more diversity you have in a field means more ways of solving a problem as well as more creativity and originality.

Knowing how to tactfully criticize someone's work is a mentor's job.

We forget how recently astronomers figured out what the stars are made of, what makes them shine, how distant they are, how they are born, and whether they remain immutable or evolve and die.

Combating any kind of obstacle is much easier if you know that it's real and not your fault, and it's something you can fight against.

My brother had been given a chemistry set for his bar mitzvah, but he wasn't interested in it. It was upstairs in the attic, and I would sneak up there and use it at great peril because I was afraid if he found out, he would get very angry at me, but he didn't seem to care.

For women, even if she's nerdy enough to be Steve Jobs, she's undateable.

Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods.

My parents didn't know how to provide me with the encouragement I needed to achieve my dreams.

The truth is, the less a subject had to do with the visible world, the more talented I was at solving problems.