Has awareness of your identity and/or HRT affected your dominating brain side?

[Emily Ivy]

I have noticed that since I realised my female identity at age of 16, my interests have shifted away from analytical and logical things towards art and psychology. In kinder garden I was a math freak and attended chess school as well. This continued to 12 - 13, when I stopped going to chess school, but remained zealous in math. During secondary school I have started to write poems, paint a lot and singing was my main interest for 16 - 18 period. Also my grammar skills have improved.

Now at 12th grade I have to make a decision about my profession and I'm puzzled if I'm going to lose interest in math someday and/or my other brain side will start to play the main role and I could study linguistics and literature.
My ideas for profession are: teacher, psychologist, programmer (or something related to math) and I'm quite scared to make the wrong decision. I'm going to start HRT soon and I'm sure it will affect some aspects of what I like and dislike, but the question is how much.

What are your experiences? Have you changed your profession after starting HRT or coming out of denial? Have your interests changed? Have you observed increase in your skills in liberal arts or a weaker analytical thinking?

[melissa90299]

I don't think it's a myth but very little is known yet about this phenomenon.

[shanetastic]

You'll be doing GE anyways for a couple years until you get into your major classes, so if your interest changes just switch your major.  It's happened to me 3x already

[shy_lory]

Awesome TOPIC!!

Ok first of all

I think that the brain-side thing tends to be a myth. Both sides can be used in math, art, etc..

Alright so I have read about the brain a good amount because Im a curious person  . And the brain-side thing is not totally a myth the left side of the brain is more specialized in logic and communication. While the right is more specialized in more emotional artistic stuff.  Anyway this is a very very layman type explanation but how the two sides of the brain integrate is different in males and females. Research has shown that females tend to develop more integration between the two sides and in essence, use their brain more dynamically while males tend to develop the same integration but the sides work more independently. But this is not the case for everyone, its just what research shows.

Anyway back to what you said

What are your experiences? Have you changed your profession after starting HRT or coming out of denial? Have your interests changed? Have you observed increase in your skills in liberal arts or a weaker analytical thinking?

Im in college right now and Im doing Physics and electrical engineering and as you can see I read alot about the brain and psychology . I always say that I think like a girl becuase I like everything from art and poems to the math that I do at school . I think its just a matter of being curious. Some people say that in order to be successful in logical stuff you need to have an artistic approach to it, or else you will never develop new things and will end up just spitting out what you have learned before. What I have noticed after becoming in touch with my identity is that I am happier. It has not necessarily changed the way I think.

Since you are starting HRT I would suggest that you figure this out beforehand. Because your thoughts will change, if you consider your thoughts at this point to be more masculine than they will change with hormones. And if your thoughts change, it doesnt necessarily mean that the hormones changed you, just the thought that you are taking hormones and the fact that you will get to live as a girl will be enough to change your perspective in life.

Anyway you have lots of time to decide in school assuming you dont go to a tech school.  A lot of schools have good tech programs but also have good art and humanities stuff. So I would suggest looking into that.   

[Emily Ivy]

Thanks for the replies

On one hand I realise that what my trying to do is trying to predict how I will  feel when I will be on HRT and living FT as a girl and I guess that it is pointless to do that, because I might as well imagine what I would feel if I were an animal I think that feelings can't be predicted.

Thus I can't really decide this beforehand, although life is pushing me into it. It is great that I will be able to switch my major (thanks shanetastic for reminder). However, even that has its limits.

P.S.

I appreciate your great input shy_lory! Somehow you aren't the first person who comes from math, tech or computers background and have figured out to be TS.

[LostInTime]

I was left handed until I went to school.   

Other than that, I have always loved to write poems (a 6th grade teacher equated one that I had written to Shakespeare and I had not even read anything by him at that point) and also love things like science and math. The really funny thing was that I was never that interested in cars and how to maintain them until after I went FT.