A story from the distant past (September 1968): President of Radcliffe College (which still admitted the 400 women who would join 1200 men in each Harvard College class) gathered the entering freshmen together. She looked up at all of us and said, "I bet each of you thinks you're the mistake we made this year." 350 girls nodded inwardly, if not outwardly. We all knew in our hearts that we were "imposters." How else did we get there? I doubt very much if it would have even occurred to the Dean of Freshman at Harvard to say such a thing; if he had, how many of those young men would have been sure he was talking about them? Forty years later, a great deal has changed at Harvard and Radcliffe (and some things have not, but that's another story). Most of the young women I know appear to be as self-confident as their male peers. But then we the Radcliffe Class of 1972, seemed self-confident, too. Would anyone have guessed how many of us thought of ourselves as "imposters"?
A story from the distant past (September 1968): President of Radcliffe College (which still admitted the 400 women who would join 1200 men in each Harvard College class) gathered the entering freshmen together. She looked up at all of us and said, "I bet each of you thinks you're the mistake we made this year." 350 girls nodded inwardly, if not outwardly. We all knew in our hearts that we were "imposters." How else did we get there? I doubt very much if it would have even occurred to the Dean of Freshman at Harvard to say such a thing; if he had, how many of those young men would have been sure he was talking about them? Forty years later, a great deal has changed at Harvard and Radcliffe (and some things have not, but that's another story). Most of the young women I know appear to be as self-confident as their male peers. But then we the Radcliffe Class of 1972, seemed self-confident, too. Would anyone have guessed how many of us thought of ourselves as "imposters"?