Taking the plunge

So, who am I and why the heck am I writing this blog?

I've been debating whether or not to do this for a while, actually. Laziness and the general frenzied state of my life have prevented me from doing so thus far. Plus, the whole idea of publishing anonymously, while exciting, is also frightening to me. But, I finally decided to go for it, and see what happens.

A bit about me: I'm a woman in a tenure-track job in a very male-dominated field--one of the computing fields. A lot of what I want to write about on this blog (at least, what I think I want to write about) relates to the issues of gender in my field, and how this affects my everyday life. I love my field and I love my work, but damn, it's lonely sometimes. And sometimes I really do feel like an alien in this culture.

There's stuff going on for me personally, too, that I will probably write about at some point. I am not sure how much of that I want to divulge at this point...but hey, I'm anonymous, so no worries! (gulp)

Mainly I just want to add another voice, another point of view to the discourse. I've been reading blogs, mainly anonymous, of other female academics, and even though I've tended to lurk and not comment, it's been tremendously helpful to my sanity to know that others are dealing with the same issues, with colleagues and research and teaching. But there are very few voices, it seems, from those of us on the techie side of academia. So I hope to be that voice, and I hope this serves as a way to bring out the other techies voices, male and female.

So, here goes nothing....