Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day - Remembering Mrs. Fischer

Today, this Oct 7 is Ada Lovelace Day and to celebrate her i am sharing with you a story about a woman who inspired me to become who i am today. This woman is Mrs. Fischer, my math teacher in grade 11 back in 1998/99.

Math intrigues me. But this was not always so.

I was fine with maths in the early school years, but i remember that starting 7th grade it became more and more complicated. The textbooks got fuller and fuller of text problems which often posed mathematical questions of this mechanical thing or that technical application or yet another physical phenomenon. It became more and more about things that were hard to imagine for a young girl interested in anything colourful, fantasy, arts or crafts.

On top of that, i had a female math teacher who repeatedly told the class that "well, girls just had to work a bit harder, but then they would get the math, too". In my eyes, this was so not just. I did not want to work harder than the stupid boys in my class (teenager times ;-) ), and i was good at most other subjects. So, many times in grades 8, 9, 10 my mind quickly went elsewhere when i did not get a problem immediately.

Math classes were quite a frustrating exercise. I did emergency work shortly before exams, but, of course, my grades deteriorated from year to year. I once drew a timeline of my math grades from the school reports and it turned out a constant downward journey.

Then year 11 came. I went to school abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, for three months and was told that each teacher of each subject back home would decide individually whether to grade me in the half-term school report at the end of winter term. I was to be gone half of that term and so i did not invest in anything that did not spark my interest more than preparing for Russian winter. Which resulted in no math for me for almost six months...

On my return i got a '5' in maths (out of 6) which was really really bad and kind of unexpected. It was equivalent to a fail. Having missed three months of class, i did not have a clue of what was happening. The new topic at the beginning of the second term - differential calculus - well, i already dreaded the name.

Frau Fischer was my rescue. I went to her and confided that i was lost. That i did not know how to get back on track after the long break, that i felt like i would never get it. She told me to hang in there, work constantly and most of all trust that i could do it. She offered support and her time telling me when and where i could find her during breaks to ask for help - anytime. She showed me additional problems to work on. She explained things to me that i did not get in class. She kept cheering me up. She said that women could be just as good at maths as men - no extra work required.

On weekends i went to my grandparents' garden, put a table on the lawn, sat in the sun and did math problems. Of my homework, the first thing i did were the math problems. When homework was done, i did more math problems. I met with my best friend and we discussed math problems (after having discussed the cute boys). I started to enjoy math problems, i started to enjoy functions, i really liked differential calculus and working with derivatives. I passed my first math test, i passed my second math test. I passed the math exam. At the end of term i scored a '1' in maths. The math timeline of my school report results jumped into a huge spike! I was thrilled.

The following two years i kept working and receiving good results. I felt bold enough to choose maths as a minor in my A levels. I passed an oral exam on statistical likelihood held by two male math teachers of my school just good enough to receive the final score i had envisioned for finishing 13 years of basic education. They congratulated me. I congratulated myself.

When i started studying political science i was immediately hooked by empirical analysis. To my horror, i did not pass the first statistics exam at university (5.0 again!). But that did not prevent me from working even harder ("girls can do it just as well!") and score a 1.0 on the second try. I was invited to be a statistics teaching assistant in the ensuing term and would have done it without hesitation had i not gone to Ecuador just then. My master thesis was a statistical empirical analysis of severe human rights violations in full force and nowadays my scientific work is based on rigorous quantitative data analysis techniques to research large-scale human rights violations.

All of this most likely would have never happened without Mrs. Fischer. I remember her sometimes when doing calculations and i am grateful to her for her constant encouragement and trust in my skill. Mrs. Fischer made me trust in my skill and, most importantly, she helped me break down that wall of fear that i had built between math and me. And this is why i really want to celebrate her today. Q.E.D.