Maybe It's Me essays: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman

Eileen is nine and too smart for the third grade, but when the clownish school psychologist tries to gain her trust with an offer of Oreos, she refuses. After all, she doesn’t accept gifts from strangers! This is the start of a love-hate relationship with the rules as they were laid out for a girl in 1960s upstate New York—and as they persist in some form today.

As she ascends from her rural public high school, where she wasn't allowed to take the advanced courses in science and math because...