Blog Post 2 -- Spring 2023 -- Professional Identity

 Hello!

The second blog post for this semester is about professional identity.

My interpretation of professional identity is basically how you want to be viewed as a professional. For example, how much of your authentic-self do you want to show, and how much is appropriate; do you want to be viewed as a leader; do you want to be the type of professional who wants to go to work, do their job, and not have to worry about bossing people around? I think your professional identity varies based on the field you are in in STEM, and what activity you are doing. A biologist might be able to dress fairly casually in the lab, but when they are presenting at a research conference it is important to dress up professionally in order to gain more respect.

Engineers tend to dress fairly casually. As a software engineer, my dad would dress in jeans in a collared shirt for work in the office even. He was never working face-to-face with clients or customers, so there was no point in requiring everyone to dress up. Eventually his job turned into a remote job (probably 15 years before Covid even happened), and at that point he never dressed up.
However, even if you are allowed to wear casual clothes for work, you can choose to dress up more depending how you want to be perceived. Dressing nice can illicit more respect from people than if you dress casually like everyone else.

I do feel like women have to try harder to be heard and taken seriously, though. This is especially true in engineering. If this is important to you as a woman, then dressing nice, again, can help you gain more respect and allow your voice to be heard.

I'm not really sure what I want my professional identity to be. I feel like that is something I will have to figure out when I graduate and get a career in my field. I have been lucky enough to work with male colleagues who treat me the same as any male colleague. However, I do feel like I often have to do extra work to prove myself. I'm not sure if it is necessary, and none of the guys I work with have made me feel like I need to prove myself, but it is simply something that I feel like I need to do for myself as a woman in the technology field.