This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by The Student Stories
Submitted by: Carmen Cielo
Country: Spain
College: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
I remember perfectly the day I applied for the math preparatory position at the School of Mechanical Engineering. The preparators were third-year students who assisted the first-year professors by solving students’ doubts and preparing exercises for their exams. Although the job was poorly paid, having that position was very honorable and looked great on a resume. So, the competition was fierce!
At the time, there were very few girls in the school, as there was still a stigma that Mechanical Engineering was a “man’s field”, which added even more pressure on those of us who applied. I was also highly motivated by the fact that first-year math was one of my favorite subjects. I had already been tutoring high school students in my neighborhood, which gave me some extra experience. I felt confident; I had studied the entire syllabus for weeks and felt ready.
The written exam went phenomenally well, so we moved on to the second stage of the competition, which consisted of explaining an exercise in front of a panel of professors. Honestly, I was very nervous. When I entered the room, I was hoping to find a female professor who would make me feel more comfortable, but there were none. All the members of the panel were older men, very well-known in the field. The pressure mounted, and I felt like a little girl among giants. How was I going to earn their respect?
To make matters worse, I suffer from hyperhidrosis in the palms of my hands, so with the nerves, my hands were sweating a lot. When I was assigned the exercise and started solving it on the board, I tried to stay calm, explaining as if I were in front of a first-year class. It was going pretty well, actually, until… my nerves betrayed me.
Suddenly, I blurted out something ridiculous. A huge mistake! I don’t remember exactly what I said, but something like: “The area of the triangle is the base times the height divided by 4.” Totally incorrect. As soon as I realized my mistake, I corrected myself aloud while trying to erase the board with the palm of my hand, but my sweat made it worse, making the blackboard look like a crime scene. Sweat drops were running across the surface, and the more I tried to fix it, the worse it got. It was a disaster! I turned red, sweating like never before. One of the older
professors noticed my struggle, got up, and said, “I think we’ve seen enough, thank you.” I left the room with my head down and immediately went to the bathroom to cry.
A few days later, I found out that I had passed the competition and secured a position. The best part was that my grade gave me the opportunity to choose which professor I wanted to work with… and I chose the one who had saved me at that moment, Professor Martín!
The day I had to give my first tutoring session, I was full of confidence. I was determined to do things right. However, a few hours before my class, I ran into some colleagues who had been in previous courses with me. They told me that, in their Advanced Calculus class, Professor [redacted for privacy] had shared the story of a girl who, during her oral presentation for the preparator contest, had gotten so nervous that she “flooded” the board with sweat and didn’t even know the area of a triangle. He had said verbatim: “I understand that you’re nervous, but not knowing
the area of a triangle… is that a joke?”
My colleagues immediately knew it was me, as everyone in the faculty knew about my sweaty hands. At that moment, I felt an immense rage. Without thinking twice, I walked straight to Professor [redacted for privacy]’s office, and when he opened the door, I let him have it: I told him how unprofessional I thought it was for him to make fun of a student who was just trying her best. I made it clear that, if he thought I was “stupid,” then the mistake wasn’t mine, but his, because it was him and his colleagues who had approved me and given me a position.
Professor [redacted for privacy], surprised, felt very sorry and apologized. The next day, he publicly apologized in his class. I accepted his apology, because I understood that everyone makes mistakes. But that day, I learned an incredibly important lesson about the professional world. No matter how much effort you put in or how well you do, there will always be someone who will focus on your mistakes. What matters is how you respond to those situations.
That course ended up going incredibly well for me, and that professor, although he made me feel small, also taught me to be assertive, to communicate my concerns, and to set boundaries when I consider something to be unprofessional or unacceptable. Today, instead of holding a grudge, I am grateful for the experience because it was a turning point for my personal and professional growth.
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This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by The Student Stories