Business Casual?

This weekend, I attended a regional conference sponsored by the Society of Women Engineers. It's an organization that I, by default, am semi-active in on campus. The conference, to me, would be an opportunity to learn more about the engineering field and to meet other women engineers from other schools. That's the basic idea I had in my head at the beginning, mistakenly confusing SWE for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (at those conferences we learn more about our faith and meet other christians at different schools).

This conference was much different. I learned nothing about the field of engineering as a whole, and didn't really talk to students from other schools. I did, however, learn about the PROFESSION of the field. What I will do after college. How I have to dress when I go to an interview. How to balance a family and work. How to leave a voice mail message without making myself look like an idiot. How to climb the corporate ladder. All of it very useful and beneficial information, so it is impossible for me to complain about this conference, it was very well put together and left me leaving very well informed (and well fed, the food was wonderful).

Although, I had a problem with the attitudes of those in charge of the conference, the adult ladies who had already been in the work force. They made me feel, I don't know, inferior. And they were teaching me ways to make myself better, like they were doing me a personal favor by telling me that when I bought a suit, to wash the pieces at the same time so they don't fade differently. We had a joint meeting between college students and professionals for an hour on Saturday, and I left absolutely disgusted with everything that had just happened. They were informing us about a leadership training conference that would be held over the summer....

At this point, I have to define a few things:
1.) A national member of SWE - someone who has registered online and pays SWE a fee of 20 dollars a year to remain a member. You cannot put SWE on your resume unless you are a national member...unless you're counting on your future employer not to check. There are also some other advantages that goes along with it...none of which I'm really familiar with
2.) Section - Your campus's SWE department. Other organizations may use the word "chapter"
3.) "In good standing" - what it sounds like... a section is said to be "in good standing" if they have at least 10 national members, and 50% of these members are female and 50% of these members are engineers.

Long story short, Behrend is not in good standing. Our school is simply too small. And half the national members we get end up transferring to university park anyway...to become part of the 200-person SWE section there. A large portion of our members haven't joined nationally because they simply don't want to pay. So when our president asked if it was okay for non-national members to attend the leadership conference over the summer, there was complete uproar. One lady, who I can describe no other way than "really mean" couldn't believe that we would think of such a thing. I just wanted to say, CHILL OUT. None of the college students cared either way, but the old ladies with sticks up their butts couldn't stand that a person who wasn't paying them money each year would think of attending to learn about how to become a leader. Obviously, you had to be a national member to hold an officer's position anyway. Except it wasn't obvious. They hadn't told us that. And really, all we needed was for the lady in charge of the meeting to say "I'm sorry, but we can't allow non-national members to attend, because we are using national funds to pay for it," because that was the bottom line, I understood that. But three or four ladies had to argue and bicker about it, and make our section president feel horrible, and make half the room feel really embarrassed, because you know that they were about to ask the same question. And it was disgusting seeing all of those so-called professionals act that way.

If I learned one thing his weekend, I learned that I never want to become like the 4 ladies in that meeting. Yelling at a college student for asking a question at a meeting only discourages other people to ask questions, which ultimately will not prove to be beneficial to the organization. I learned that they want my money, and that seems to be all they cared about. The corporate world officially scares me now. Maybe I won't become an engineer. Maybe I will just live in a van down by the river for the rest of my life. Or I'll marry rich and stay home with our 18 children every day. To me, both of those options are more appealing than what I saw at that meeting in those 4 adult women, who insisted on acting like middle-school children.

If I EVER put money in front of the people in my life, you have my permission to slap me in the face. Twice.