A Journey to STEM: Girls Who Code

My passion for STEM fields and the involvement of women in STEM began in the sixth grade. This passion blossomed through my involvement in various organizations such as my role on the planning committee of WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) — an annual workshop that brings together girls that are passionate about STEM from all over New York City — and my membership in the Girls Who Code club at my previous school. It was in this Girls Who Code club that I found a sense of belonging. In our society, we each have a group that we feel a sense of connection to. This may be a religious group, an academic group, or a cultural group. However, beyond these groups lie their alumni — those who have already experienced the path that all in this group must walk upon. We aspire to tread the same paths as these “god-like” figures, to experience their bounty of knowledge. Within Girls Who Code, I found both this belonging and my own “god-like” figures. Here I discovered a group of girls that held the same interest as I did in STEM. As we convened every week after school on Tuesday, we worked through a multitude of coding exercises over sugary snacks, every exercise a rite of passage towards not only the strengthening of the bond that we held, but towards the paths of those we aspired to. My god-like figures were club leaders that were physics and math teachers at the school, many of whom had grown up in a time in which the idea of women pursuing STEM fields was a laughable aspiration. However, their passion for STEM never subsisted. Some of my other god-like figures were high school seniors who were members of the club whom I watched excel in their studies and get accepted into institutions such as MIT that I only dreamed of as a middle school student.

So, several years later as I left my middle school and entered my new high school, I knew that my goal was to create the community which I had experienced as a middle schooler. As I created this club, I hoped to be able to be a mentor to the younger girls in the club just as the high school girls at my previous Girls Who Code club were to me. Furthermore, I hoped that I would be able to live up to these previous god-like figures and to tread paths that were similar to those that they had tread. As a current eleventh grade student, I am proud not only of the community that I have created within my school — a nook that celebrates women’s involvement in STEM and continues the rite of passage into STEM fields — but of the girls within my club. The STEM symposium that now lies within my club allows for girls from varying grades to come together and, as I did, strengthen their bond — one coding exercise at a time.