When girls do well on a test- particularly in math and science – they tend to report that maybe the exam was easy or that they just got lucky that day. And if they don’t do well they say that they have never been good at that subject, or that its very difficult for them…these findings seem to support Gilligan’s data showing that girls become unsure of themselves in adolescence, particularly in male dominated domains (as math and science traditionally have been) (Sadowski, 88).

While reading Michelle Galley’s piece in Ch. 5, this specific quote caught my attention and reminded me of my experience with math class throughout high school. When I was younger, math was definitely not one of my best subjects for I often did struggle grasping concepts. During this time I watched my older sister thrive in the math and always wondered why I struggled so much in this subject area. I would often hear praises of my sister explain how great it is for a girl to be so strong in the math field and she was encouraged to follow this area into college studies. As the praises continued for my sister of the “rare case”, I started to convince myself that math is just not a subject for girls to exceed in. Similarly to the quote above, if I received a good grade I would simply say I got lucky, or if I performed poorly I would use the excuse of “I’m just not good in this subject”. In a way this conception had a very negative effect on myself. It got to a certain point where I began to believe this notion so much that I became unmotivated and stopped putting forward effort for this subject. With this thinking pattern, I gave up on trying and felt as though I didn’t necessarily have to improve because “its rare that girls are good in math”. I truly believe that these general negative assumptions as well as negative perceptions of myself alone contributed to my poor grades in math.If I continued to work without thinking about these negative assumptions and perceptions I would have performed better. Looking back I am amazed on what a strong influence perceptions of the self (in regards to gender expectations) can have on academic performance. With this in mind, I think its extremely important for teachers to work with students in examining self perceptions and break through the gender related expectations in an effort to avoid negative effects on academic performance.