The essay is beautifully written, but its argument doesn't land for me.
The understands "being Technical" as something to be granted for its own sake. But wanting to be Technical without any real problem to solve is hollow. Technical isn’t an identity you earn through argument, it’s something you become in the process of doing the work.
It's funny, I have almost exactly the opposite take. I find what she's saying is important, or at least a valuable personal story, but the faux-academic style makes the essay hard to follow. Some paragraphs are barely intelligible.
The various personal anecdotes are so lacking in detail that I read some of them three times and still wasn't sure exactly what had happened. They accomplish the opposite of grounding and illustrating the more abstract points: they make it more confusing.
I wouldn't really call this academic style, at least none of the research I read uses this sort of tone, let alone personal language (completely fine in an essay of course).
My main issue is how circuitous and rant-y it comes off as. Honestly the rhetoric style of argumentation and no qualifiers or even attempts to define terms makes it a really hard read.
Maybe in her own mind she doesn't want to take it even though it is earned. That is a common problem, and as a psychologist she should well be aware of that. (I believe that the problem is more common amount women - but I'm not the psychologist she is, and so it would be wrong for me to tell her truths in her field)
Even if she claims it, there's no end of people who will reject it, argue it, make her prove it, etc. I think that's one of the points: nothing she can do can truly make her seen as being worthy of it broadly enough to matter.
I don't recognise her requirements for "being Technical". I think she feels like an outsider because she doesn’t meet her own arbitrary standard for what "being Technical" means.
The understands "being Technical" as something to be granted for its own sake. But wanting to be Technical without any real problem to solve is hollow. Technical isn’t an identity you earn through argument, it’s something you become in the process of doing the work.