I've noticed over the past few months that the tension between STEM and Arts majors has intensified, especially over media outlets like Odyssey. I think one of the main sources of this conflict is the recent outpouring of encouragement for high school students to pursue STEM majors.

Add that to the stereotypes that surround Arts and STEM majors and the conflict seems inevitable. As this has developed, I've read numerous articles from the perspective of non-STEM majors expressing their frustration with the aforementioned encouragement. They talk about how they feel like their majors are overlooked or deemed less important, or that people who don't go into STEM are less intelligent.

While I can appreciate how these unfair judgments and assumptions are upsetting, I would like to offer my take on the situation.

Thankfully, I grew up in a time where (for the most part) I was encouraged to excel in school, no matter what the subject was. I can't pinpoint the first time I was introduced to the idea that STEM was better suited for my male classmates, but the gender stereotype became painfully clear when I started touring colleges.

I decided pretty early on that I wanted to study some form of engineering, so I visited schools that were STEM heavy and had strong academic reputations. As I did my research and looked at the statistics, I was extremely intimidated and surprised.

I found universities that had an overall even gender ratio, but the engineering colleges within universities would range between 10 and 28 percent female. At first, this didn't bother me, but then I started actually visiting schools and walking past classrooms where I didn't see a single girl.

The fact that the students are mostly male was one problem I was prepared for, but the other factor I hadn't considered was the fact that no matter where I went, most of my teachers would be men too. Now, if you've never been in this type of situation (like I hadn't until recently), then you won't understand why this is a problem.

But imagine what this might feel like: you work hard and pursue a career in your desired field and you are looking up to your mentors and reading success stories that are all great, until you realize you are different from them in one of the most fundamental ways. Trying to have a career as a female engineer (or any other male-dominated career) can seem impossible when you only know a handful of women who have done it.

In addition to the blatant inequality, there are also countless details that I never considered before I was exposed to them. One of the strangest is reading word problems in textbooks. In my chemistry textbook, almost every problem had to do with a chemistry student and his experiment. His, not hers.

If you read that last sentence as just another feminist millennial complaint then I would like you to think to yourself when you read the word engineer, why do you picture a man first? Why is it ingrained in our minds and in our culture that STEM fields are for men? It is 2018 and I am sick of this.

Of course, I don't expect to wake up one day and find that engineering programs across the country are now mostly 50/50 female/male instead of 18/82 (yes, it is that low), but change needs to come sooner rather than later. This brings me back to the issue of Arts majors versus STEM majors.

I can appreciate that the media is currently focusing on STEM and how great the career prospects are for future STEM majors, but the reason this is happening is because our generation is trying to undo literally hundreds of years of inequality.

So yes, I think we should keep going to middle schools and telling girls about how amazing science is. I think there needs to be more focus on providing scholarships to girls who can't afford to spend four or five years at a technical university. I want there to be so much encouragement for girls to go into STEM that when we ask elementary school girls what they want to be when they grow up at least a few of them say engineer.

No matter what your major is, or if you've been made to feel like your major isn't as respectable as a STEM major, please join me in this movement. This isn't about whose major is harder, or who has the best job security after graduation. This is about making sure that the next generation of female students never have to feel like the odd woman out.