A majority of millennial men failed to see women as equals, according to the study, which looked at how college biology students viewed their classmates’ intelligence and achievements, the Harvard Business Review reported.

Among the findings:

In every biology class surveyed, a man was seen as the most celebrated student, even in instances where women earned significantly better grades.

Men were also found to overestimate the intelligence of their male classmates over that of female ones.

Men continued exaggerating their assessments of the male peers, despite unequivocal evidence that their female peers were performing better.

Women, conversely, weren’t found to display a bias: Their assessments of fellow classmates tended to be spot-on.

The National Institutes of Health researchers pointed out that female STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors drop out at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts.

“The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom,” they wrote.

Still, scores of men are under the impression that they’ve become the target of reverse sexism. Conservative columnist John Hawkins ranted in Town Hall last year:

“Men have it rougher in America than most people realize. In part, that’s because they’re one of the few groups (along with white people, conservatives, and Christians) it’s cool to crap on at every opportunity. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a nonstop assault on masculinity in America.”

But research has confirmed the reality of gender bias against women. A staggering 90 percent of women reported experiencing gender harassment in the workplace, a 2010 University of Michigan study found. The results suggest that such harassment had the purpose of driving women out of jobs and not the generally assumed motivation of trying to draw women into relationships.

“One could argue that, in these instances, ‘sexual harassment is used both to police and discipline the gender outlaw: the woman who dares to do a man’s job is made to pay,’” the researchers wrote, quoting an article by Katherine M. Franke, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona College of Law.

As for millennial men specifically, they have been less accepting of female leaders than their older male counterparts, according to a 2014 survey of more than 2,000 adults residing in the United States, the Harvard Business Review reports.

Half of Millenial men said their careers would take priority over their partners’. 

“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which — in addition to its nutritional deficits — is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor — especially with children to support and care for — is a perpetual high-wire act.”

my brother is 26 years old, makes $200k a year, and just bought a house with his fiance. he’s the success story you hear about but never actually meet in person, but it all happened by accident. he wanted to go to college for clarinet performance, but he got rejected from all the top schools. so he decided to major in physics instead, and then went on to get a doctorate to put off being an adult for a few more years. but then he ended up dropping out halfway through the program and accepting a job with google as a software engineer. so to reiterate: my brother majored in something he was not interested in, and then he got a job that had nothing to do with his degree. 

he isn’t successful because he had some master plan he followed, he just stumbled around blindly until something worked out. and that’s what we’re all doing–i majored in political science and now i do customer service for a company that makes industrial-sized gas detection monitors. the marketing director at my company has a degree in biology, and my mom has an MBA and works at a middle school.  no one knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying different things until something works out.

When I was seventeen, I was 100% sure that I was going to get a job as a bureaucrat and save the world. When I was a 21-year-old recent college grad, I found out that it’s impossible to get a government job unless you know someone. So I gave up and found something else. I know my teenage self would be disappointed if she could see where I’m at, but you know what? I don’t care. Because teenage me was an idiot. She didn’t know anything about the world or how it worked, and she couldn’t have possibly predicted the curveballs that life would throw at her. And because I don’t know a single person who’s doing the thing they wanted to do when they were teenagers.

6 months ago I started my first day as an RN in my first real career job, in my dream field. honestly can’t believe it’s only been 6 months because it feels like it’s been at least a year or two. Thats how much things have changed. I had heard that being a new grad is hard and the first year is tough, but I am still shocked at how truly difficult it was. I never expected to feel so belittled, so outspoken, and so anxious and so, so insecure every single day. I could barely speak a word to my co workers because i believed that every single thing I did or said, even down to the way I moved my body, was being judged. I knew the other nurses thought i was incompetent. And they weren’t wrong. I was incompetent. I was not qualified for this job. I had the 4 years of schooling and a lot of practicum hours but nursing school in absolutely no way prepared me to watch a baby die, no way could have prepared me for the feeling of absolute terror when rushing a women off to the operating room knowing that your actions directly impacted whether or not she and her child are going to live. My manager told me they rarely hire new grads, I should be proud. But I feel panic in normal every day situations. This environment was NOT the place for someone like me. I would have quit weeks after I started, I swear I would have but ive dreamt of delivering babies for 10 years and I could not let myself let my lifelong dream go after 2 weeks on the job. I don’t entirely know what it was that made me keep going, I just kept telling myself every day would be a bit easier. And some days were easier, and some days were much harder. I felt lonely and depressed and slept all day and barely ate a thing and went to work at night and the anxiety made me physically ill almost every day, I lost 20lbs in 3 weeks and I repeated the same thing every single day. I couldn’t adjust physically or emotionally. But somehow, without really knowing when or how, things changed. I felt hungry sometimes. I stopped throwing up from anxiety when I was getting ready for work. I faced emergency situations and I knew how to handle them. Actually, I could even handle them semi calmly. I spoke up when I needed to. I learned to trust my gut and act on it. And now the other nurses and doctors trust my assessments and ask me what I think is best for our patients. I am competent. Sometimes I’m even confident. I’ve learned more in the past 6 months than I ever learned in 4 years of school. I’ve grown so much as a person and know who I am as a nurse. And i am anxious. And sometimes I do feel so exhausted and sad and lonely that I can sleep for 18 hours. And I am competent. And I am a compassionate and caring nurse. And I am an advocate for my patients. And I can help a baby to breathe. I can empower women to do what their bodies are made to do. And I can look at over 200 little humans and know that I had a part in bringing them safely into the world.

I was told several times throughout the day today that it was medical malpractice to not put this patient on bipap, that we needed to transfer her to the step down unit, and HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A CO2 THAT HIGH, and “remember this in the future, Rachel, remember this patient and what you’re doing wrong here.”

The first person I ever had die on me was from hypercarbic respiratory failure. I was a third year medical student. It was my first week on internal medicine wards. She was my patient. She had terrible sarcoidosis. I went to pre-round on her one morning, and she wouldn’t wake up. I called her name, touched her arm, she wouldn’t wake up. I sternal rubbed her, and she wouldn’t wake up. I checked her pulse, and it was there. I got my resident, but she still wouldn’t wake up. We called an RRT, got her on bipap, and she came to. She ultimately refused to wear the bipap. Died a few days- maybe a week- later. She just didn’t wake up one morning.

My patient now reminds me so much of her. She’s tiny and frail, and keeps telling me how tired she is. Her numbers look worse every day. She was hard to wake up this morning, but I didn’t have to sternal rub her- not yet.

I asked her how she sees her end of life. What does she envision for the rest of her time here. She said she wants to go home, to be with her family, see her 16 year old grandson drive his car. She wants to be comfortable. She doesn’t want machines breathing for her. She doesn’t want broken ribs. She doesn’t want to be shocked. She just wants to be at home, surrounded by her loved ones, comfortable. And she doesn’t want to wear a mask. She doesn’t want arterial sticks and blood gas measures. “If it’s my time to go,” she said, and she didn’t seem upset about it.

My resident pulled me out of the patient’s room by the sleeve of my scrubs today- in the middle of a family meeting with her son who flew in from a different continent. “Look at her!” he whispered angrily. “She’s like…agonal breathing in there!” (She was not, actually, but I’ll allow him hyperbole.) “She’s dying, Rachel! She needs BiPAP!”

I got angry. I have two days left in intern year. If I was going straight through residency, I’d have my own team of brand new interns on Friday. I can think for myself. I can make medical decisions. I can talk end of life care with a family. And I DO NOT appreciate being dragged out of a compassionate care meeting by the sleeve of my scrubs.

I looked him in the eye. My resting bitch face turned into active bitch face. I said through gritted teeth, in a whisper because the family was still in the room with the door open, “Yes. She is dying. And she has declined bipap several times today- once while you were just in the room right now. She. Doesn’t. Want. It. Informed consent exists for a reason. So you tell me, is it malpractice to force a treatment on a patient that directly goes against their end of life wishes and goals of care when they have explicitly stated they do not want it?”

He sighed. He buckled a little. “Fine. Just document in your note that we offered and she refused.”

I practically growled at him, glaring. “I already did. Read my notes.” I turned around and walked back into the patient’s room. He stood there for a second before he joined us back in the room.

I don’t know what he was thinking, but I hope it’s not that we have failed the patient by allowing her to die. Death is not a failure. Last I checked, we hadn’t invented a cure for death yet. 100% of our patients will die some day. So if death is the measure by which we’re being graded- we’re all failures and we should give up, quit our jobs, and idk become grave diggers.

Nursing, as we all have probably heard countless of times, is a “noble” profession. It is an act of giving; not just of your skills or intellect, but also of your heart. Many would attest to this, I am sure. But I suppose, for those who have little to no insight on the goings-on of this humble profession, nurses become under-appreciated and mistreated. This is something nurses experience on a daily basis. It is a troubling and disheartening truth. Ergo, let us talk about it.

It is common-knowledge for non-healthcare professionals that nurses are mere doctors’ assistants. In fact, a considerably offensive “hate post” on facebook from a teacher has gone viral a few weeks ago. To rephrase her conviction, in my personally offended understanding, nurses are simply mindless robots, bowing down to the will and whims of physicians. Unlike teachers who rack their brains from thinking of new ways and means to impart knowledge to the next generation of professionals, nurses have no intellectual stress whatsoever, owing to the fact that we do nothing but wait for the physicians orders. Therefore, to the person who wrote that hate post, yes you! The following statement is for you. I have nothing against you. And this is not a bashing. You probably have had too much already. From the looks of it, you were probably responding to an insulting post from an imbecile (whether that person is a nurse or not, albeit most likely that person is). So let me apologize on that imbecile’s behalf. I am sorry. I respect educators. A few of my closest friends are educators and I have nothing but praise for them. I do hope, however, that the next time you speak your mind, you get the facts straight first.

Since I have side-tracked a bit (I needed to get that out of my system), let me direct you, the reader, back to the “doctors’ assistants”. This short definition of nursing hypothetically stemmed from years of belittlement and bullying from our respectable physicians and sometimes from misguided hospital administration (this hypothesis is on account of personal experience). To berate a nurse in front of patients and their significant others for whatever reason is a massive offense to the profession as a whole. Nurses’ unforgivable faults include but are limited to failing to prepare the patients’ charts for the doctor’s arrival, not being able to give your immediate attention to the “busy” consultant who just arrived, not giving patients or their relatives exactly what they want even if it is ill-advised, forgetting to secure the suture to the needle holder before a procedure, not being fast enough, questioning or clarifying an ambiguous order, etc. Believe me, the list is infinite. When these tongue-lashings occur, nurses rarely fight back, meekly lowering their gaze from this pseudo-authority. It is inexcusably unprofessional. It depreciates nurses in the eyes of the misinformed and hence they follow suit with the berating and mistreatment. This practice incapacitates nurses which in turn has unfortunate effects to patients themselves. Doctors and nurses collaborate to meet one ultimate goal – a patient’s clean bill of health. To achieve this goal, we must build good rapport and communication, and this is a 2-way process. Yet, a lot of physicians fail to understand this basic principle.

The purpose of this post is not merely to complain. It is also a way to educate. To our infamous educator mentioned above, you said that if not for teachers, there would be no nurses in the first place. That is only partly true. We learned our knowledge and skillset from Registered Nursing Professionals who took their master’s degree so they can teach. Simply put, you cannot teach nursing if you are not, in the first place, a nurse. And by the way, have you ever seen nursing books? You would probably be knocked-out if a pissed-off RN slaps one on your face and that is not even the worst thing that could happen. Stack these books one on top of the other and it’d probably be half your height. That is the amount of knowledge we have to cram inside our brains so that one day, we would be deserving enough to attach those 2 letters to our names. Because you apparently have no idea what we do for a living, let me explain.

In every healthcare setting a patient enters, nurses are the front liners. The moment you step inside the emergency room, nurses look at you head-to-foot taking note of your facial expression (which is a dead give-away for pain, discomfort, nausea, etc.) and any obvious injury of your body or limbs. You are then ushered to an examination bed and no, the doctor does not swoop in immediately to save the damsel in distress. You are categorized according to the urgency of your need and this is determined by the nurse.

When we sit at our stations writing or making and answering calls, it seems so secretarial. However, nurses are multitasking with mountains of paperwork, making appropriate calls, and finishing physical work so that anything patient-wise is nothing but smooth. When the doctor orders for an abdominopelvic ultrasound, he simply writes “abdominopelvic ultrasound”. The nurse understands that for the patient to be able to do the procedure, the patient must start fasting 8 hours before the appointment and that an hour or so prior to the procedure the patient must drink ample amounts of water so that his/her bladder is full in time for the procedure. When the patient stands up after lying in bed for hours and complains of severe dizziness while his/her face is pale white, we know that it is called orthostatic hypotension. This means that blood has pooled in the lower limbs and all we have to do is lie the patient back down, elevate his/her feet, check blood pressure and reassess after a few minutes to see if the patient’s condition has improved. No need to panic. Don’t even get me started on blood transfusions, chemotherapy, road-traffic accidents, cardiac arrest, etc. Modesty aside, there is more to being a nurse that most people think.

To those doctors who have been berating nurses for nothing, or worse, for the sheer pleasure of it, you have caused more harm than good. You have stained the image of the profession that can be your greatest ally. A good doctor does not reprimand a nurse in front of the patient and relative. He calls the nurse’s attention in private to discuss concerns. A great doctor teaches nurses what is right so that mistakes can be prevented in the future. A doctor who berates is neither good nor great, he is simply a bully with an MD.