They say it doesn't really matter. They say they never feel out of place in the classroom. And they say they get treated equally by their instructors and peers. Meet Dawon, Jenni, Brian and Sheila ­ Kent State students in majors that are nontraditional for their genders.

According to these four, it hardly makes a difference whether they are male or female. Most of the time, it just comes down to how well they do their jobs.

When Dawon Hawkins gets up in the morning, he likes to lay out his clothes on his bed before putting them on. "I'm very conscious about what I look like," Hawkins says. "I will stand in front of my closet and look and look and look." The Kent State junior wants to make sure his outfit stands out. He wants to be sure it makes a statement about his mood.

"I kind of think of life as a drag," he says. "It's all about who you want to be perceived as. When you wake up in the morning and get dressed, you're putting on a persona."

Hawkins says if he's in a bad mood, he'll wear something bland and reserved. "But some days, you cannot contain me," he says. "I have some bright, bright clothes that will make your head spin. Sometimes it hurts my eyes to look at them."

One of Hawkins' most creative ensembles is his St. Patrick's Day outfit ­ lime-green plastic pants and a green swimming cap. He poked holes in the cap so strands of his shoulder-length black hair could be pulled through. His favorites also include his so-called "construction uniform outfit" and, especially, his banana-yellow suit from a thrift store.

Hawkins is one of only 15 men in Kent State's fashion design and merchandising programs. Combined, there are 340 students enrolled in the two majors.

Tameka Ferguson, a junior fashion design major and friend of Hawkins, says he fits right in. She says she doesn't even think twice about his choice of clothes. "I don't think anything of it because I dress the same way," she says. "Eighty percent of fashion design students dress kind of weird."

When Hawkins gets a reaction about his choice of major, it's usually from someone he meets outside his classes. "When I tell people what my major is, I get a lot of mixed reactions," he says. "If I'm hanging out with an alternative group wearing my bells and a skin-tight shirt, people are like, 'That is so cool.' If I meet people who are ultra-conservative, I get a more inquisitive-type reaction. They want to know what it's like and what I want to do."

People's reactions to his major can reveal a lot about them, Hawkins says. But no reaction will change his mind about wanting to be a designer. "I like the idea of being yourself and not trying to conform to what other people want you to be," he says. "I love fashion with all my being. That's who I am."

As a member of Kent State's flight program, senior Sheila Medary frequently holds others' lives in her hands. And she says she's never carted a passenger who complained about her gender.

Medary, 21, started flying when she was 15. She's now a part of the 14 percent of women who study aerospace flight technology at Kent. In fact, some women are praised excessively for enrolling in the program, says Ruth Sitler, chief flight instructor of Kent State's flight operations. "I think it even impresses people more than it should," Sitler says. "Sometimes I think I get noticed more than men, and I don't think that's fair."

But, for the most part, the praise is not undeserved, she says. She says women are excellent pilots, sometimes better than men. "Men have twice the amount of accidents - proportionately - as women do," she says. "Women are very cautious."

Medary says she personally doesn't get praise or flak in the field. "Most of the time, it doesn't make any difference."

But she does remember meeting an older pilot who said he had never even met a female pilot before. He left a lasting impression. "I was flying solo cross-country, from Kent to Indiana. But there was bad weather, so I had to stop at a little airport in southern Ohio," she says.

She came across the pilot, who was in his 60s, while she was waiting for the skies to clear up. He didn't believe she was a pilot, Medary says. And then he started telling stories about when he was a young pilot. "He started telling me about when he flew and what women were like then," she says. "He told me about an airport with a bar right across the street, and how he would pick up women there and take them on airplane rides. He told them, 'Yeah, come look at my airplane. Do you want to go for a ride?'"

"I just thought, I'm glad things have changed," Medary says.

Senior Jenni Huxel has a different morning routine than most students. She drags herself out of bed to run a couple of miles at 6:30 a.m. After running, she does 40 push-ups and 70 sit-ups within the required two-minute time limits. As a female enlisted in the Army ROTC program, Huxel works hard to prove that women are as physically capable as men.

"Sometimes I feel like I have to prove myself because I'm a female," she says. "No one ever says I have to prove myself, but I want to show that females can do the same things physically as men."

Huxel, a nursing major, has dusted some of her male comrades in the two-mile run. "I'm right up with the guys, if not in front of them," says the petite, 105-pound blonde.

Kent's Army ROTC program has 60 members, 14 of whom are women. Although women are outnumbered, Huxel says she never feels as if she doesn't belong. "The males in ROTC are accepting," she says. "If they have any bias, they cover it up well."

Dan Fenn, a senior criminal justice major and ROTC member, says the military doesn't lend itself to holding biases. "I think the military is the most integrated workplace," he says. "It really doesn't matter what your gender is or what color your skin is."

Women in the program must meet military fitness standards, but they don't have as difficult physical requirements as the males, Huxel says. But as far as sheer physical strength goes, being a woman can be a disadvantage. Huxel remembers an exercise she had to do over the summer at Advanced Camp (similar to boot camp).

"We had obstacles where we had to use all 10 people in our group," she says. "The mission was something like having to get all the members of our group and these boxes over a wall - and the weaker component in that case was the female. You have to rely on the guys to help you get over because they're stronger."

Huxel says her grandmother once told her something that she will never forget. "She said that it's a male world," Huxel remembers. "Personally, I think it's gotten a lot better. But I don't know if it will ever be perfect."

Senior Brian Sente might disagree withthe statement, "it's a man's world," because males make up only 12 percent of Kent State's nursing program. Even when he's the only one around who is strong enough to lift or move a patient, female nurses are more likely to make a group effort to get it done than to seek him out, Sente says.

"It's not like everyone says, 'Get Brian! He's the male. He's the biggest one here,'" he says. "They don't give me all the dirty work or anything like that."

According to Claire Nalepka, an associate professor of nursing, male nursing students rarely have a different experience in clinicals than females. When they do have problems, she says, it's because they are afraid to do things because they are males. "I think sometimes men think they are at a disadvantage because nurses have to be in very personal, intimate situations with their patients," she says. In situations like helping a mother breast feed her newborn, some male students tend to be very timid, she says.

Sente, who became interested in nursing when his older sister joined the profession, says he doesn't feel awkward as a male. The only time he says he's at a disadvantage is when female patients don't want him for a nurse. "I've lost out on a few things, like putting a catheter in a female," he says. "The patient refused because she wanted to have a female do it. But you have to respect that. I didn't leave the room all upset and mad - it's just some people's beliefs."

He says it does disturb him that he's deprived of learning because he's a guy. "I'm on the same professional level as any of the female nurses," Sente says. "We're all professionals and we're here strictly to do our job. I understand that people may feel uncomfortable. But it's all about managing the care of people's lives."