My Story

  While I was in high school, I believed  the only way I could help people was through politics, specifically international relations. I spent days after school in government clubs and took multiple languages. I was even a rotary youth exchange student in Finland for my senior year of high school. When I came home I immediately started college at Penn State University, and took my very first international relations class. In my first fall semester, I realized that I really didn't want to continue with what I had thought I wanted to do all through high school. 

  That was tough, and immediately after, I tried  a series of liberal arts majors: Italian, Linguistics, and Speech Pathology, but nothing fit. After three semesters of struggling in school I decided to take some time off. I worked in the food industry as a barista, waitress, and cook. I learned that a life in the service industry was a lot harder than I imagined. I got my Lifeguarding Certification and worked at a pool and taught kids to swim for awhile. I enjoyed the teaching process and found it rewarding when the kids improved.

  My story is fortunate, however. My parents were going to move to take positions in New York, so they offered me the chance to move with them and start fresh. I could begin at the local community college. I did, and it was the best decision I could have made to go with them. 

  Before my semester started at Bucks County Community College, I was trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to major in. My mom, who is a  software engineer, told me to work through some Codeacademy tutorials to see if I enjoyed programming. I found that I did and signed up for a Java I class at my new school. I enjoyed programming so much I decided to major in it and it has stuck.

  I had never considered programming as a major because I never felt confident in STEM classes in high school and middle school. It wasn't that I wasn't succeeding, because I did well in these classes, but I felt a social pressure toward liberal arts and to shy away from STEM. As a teenager, I felt like I didn't want to do what my mom does, I underestimated how much I am like her. When I moved with my parents and started spending more time with them, I came to the realization that I indeed do have an engineer’s mind (and that is not a bad thing :-)). 

  I now have my Associates degree in Computer Science from Bucks County Community College. It was important to me when looking at 4-year schools that I looked for a small school, which is why I love Bloomsburg University. They are small but have a wonderful program. The professors are super smart  and I feel like they care about whether or not their students succeed.

  I have also joined my school’s ACM chapter (Association of Computing Machinery) and this year I will be the Vice President of our chapter. I am excited for the opportunity to work with the CompSci professors and hope to reach out and try to get more girls involved with coding. Hopefully, we can collaborate with local high schools and try to lay a foundation for a supporting girls who would like to pursue STEM studies. Near and dear to my heart, I would also like to try and plan a trip into the city to attend a Hack-a-thon or other tech event.  

  Another important thing I have learned now, is that traditional studies alone is not enough. I learn most when I also try things independently and keep searching for new ways to learn. I learn a ton when I create my own projects or work through tutorials to acquaint myself with new technologies.

  While looking for summer opportunities, I stumbled upon MakeGamesWithUs. MakeGamesWithUs is a program where you learn to make iOS games, and so much more. We not only learn how to code the game, but what it means to build a project, manage it, and market it (and ourselves). I am learning so much. The tutorials we have access to have been particularly helpful to me. People learn at different rates, so it has been helpful to control the pace and level of learning to what works best for me.

  I don’t know what the future holds for me, except that I know I want to be in this field. I do think that this program combined with my traditional studies is preparing me for anything. Next stop? Taking over the world!!!!!!(or at least this next semester).