I grew up in a society with a patriarchal culture, in which women are supposed to stay home, taking care of kids and doing the housework. As a kid, there was no woman around me who I could call my role model. I didn't want to be like my mom, I didn't want to spend my days just cooking and cleaning. I wanted to live a different life.
When I was around six or seven, I always wanted to be an actress. I used to stand in front of a mirror and practice my acting. In all of my stories, I was either a victim or a hero. In the beginning, I was just working on dialogues. I stood straight and talked instead of all the characters. A bit later, I decided to add actions. So, I taught myself how to whistle with my fingers, how to mimic emotions by my face, and when and how I should move my hands or turn my head. I was always trying to follow the news around my favorite actresses to keep myself updated. I knew there were many limitations for actresses in my country, but I still wanted to grow up and be a successful superstar.
I was eight or nine when I realized I really want to be an author or a poet. I was spending a lot of time reading books and I was reading everything, from classic novels, both original and translated, to history and science. Anything that I could find on my dad's book collection or on my sister's bookshelf. Instead of acting my stories, I tried to write them down. Notebook after notebook, I was dreaming of being a well-known author. Unlike actresses, there were a few well-known women in that area at the time. So I knew I should be very very good to be able to compete and be successful in that male-dominated world.
I remember that day very clearly. I was 10 and in Grade 4 and at the end of math class the teacher distributed a quiz. I was always a good student, but that was a hard one. We had literature in the next class and we were supposed to memorize a poem, which I didn't. I was all distracted by trying to remember words, which prevented me to focus on the question in the quiz. Literature was my favorite course; I was always shining there, and I didn't want to disappoint my teacher. I finished the math quiz as soon as I could and started working on that poem which I don't remember what it was now.
The next day, our teacher walked in. She talked a little bit, and then called my name. Surprisingly, I got the highest mark on that math quiz! I was like "wow, did that really happen?" My teacher, a very kind and smart person, talked to me later and encouraged me to work on my mathematical mind. She said math and literature are related and I can describe the beauty of math in my stories and my poems or that's how I understood it.
Difficult decisions! That's what life always has to offer. I knew I was good at math and I knew I wanted to write, not to become an author anymore, but to write to calm myself down. So that was not a very hard decision to make after all. Math became my passion, my profession, something I could build my career upon. It made me think deeper.
Writing became my hobby, my relaxation and my meditation. It made me feel deeper. I went to university to study applied mathematics for my undergrad studies. For four years, characters in my stories were numbers and operations, fractions and decimals, algebra and geometry. There was one and only one woman, who won many national and international prizes in math, who I was following, and I wanted to be like her.
How about computer science? My husband asked that when we were in the middle of applying for Canadian universities to attend as graduate students. I had limited knowledge about that, however, I agreed to apply for it. That was the new thing I was looking for. I was so excited when we got our admissions, and that was the moment I realized that's the different life I chose to live it. When I started my studies here, the big problem was there again: a few numbers of women in computer science.
From acting to computer science, I have been always looking for someone I can look up to. I know what I am about to say is huge, but sometimes I ask myself how about I try and become someone else's role model.
- Nahid Taheri is an instructor in computer science at CNC.
