My journey to adulthood can be compared to biting into a fresh apple. The core of the fruit is the peak of knowledge that I strived to obtain. Every bite of an apple came with a new learning experience. The Girls Who Code Immersion program were multiple bites into an apple that came close to satisfying my hunger for knowledge.
“My little princess is growing up” said my mother with a smile after she dropped me off to my next journey to New York City. Sauntering along the streets of the “Big Apple” and learning computer science at Girls Who Code was a dream come true. I never imagined my parents letting me go to New York City alone. Walking on the busy streets alongside thousands of people was worth gaining exposure to computer science.
As I opened the front door of the IBM Building, my next chapter in life began. My eyes widen as I observed my teacher writing code on the smartboard. Uneasiness and fear rushed down my spine. I was the only person among fourteen girls without prior knowledge of coding. I spent eight hours in a confined room learning how to code. My computer science teacher appointed assignments in HTML and Python.
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I was given a task to create a website within one week. I began my quest in searching online for text and image codes; however, I was unable to distinguish the red error in my code. Day after day, I sat in front of my laptop trying to decode this puzzle. My energy was draining slowly. But now was not the time to complain. Looking down at my laptop, it just hit me: the forgotten semicolon. This semicolon was the final piece that completed my line of code. As a result, this website allowed people to organize their tasks with jars. Jellybeans represented the assignments and were added to the jar every time the project was completed. Even though debugging my code took days, I remained confident in my ability to
Four years of my life drained away at this place called Troy High School. After this year I will be walking away from Troy, worn and torn from the hours of anticipation for grades to be posted, the next weekend to arrive, the answer to whether that special someone will say yes to the next dance, or the unbearable wait for that painstaking bell to ring. Troy is a place of education, a very good one at that, with its Blue Ribbon Award and national recognition, you’d think I would be walking away with knowledge that will serve me well for decades to come, but no. I could have learned the same things I learned at Troy anywhere, it is the insight I picked up that will take me far. “What insight?” you ask. Its priceless wisdom really, it’s a shame too many people overlook it or take it for granted. You see there are some basic classes every Troy student takes, that in the long run prove to be very useful beyond their educational platforms. Take the Troy Tech classes, they offer more than just facts about 1s and 0s and codes of programming. Looking deeper into what is learned in these classes one can pick up the Zen like teachings. Bases, the fact that a ‘10’ can be any number, depending on its base, touches upon the idea how in the real world people seem to be the utmost characters of greatness but the more you get to know them, and their base, they can turn to be someone better or more often then not, something worse than what you first anticipated. In the course of programming we learn that there are several ways to solving a problem, just some are shorter than others and some easier to find the bugs, it depends on the commands you use. Such as how in life when using the right commands, or truths, will get you far, while some just tak...
Maybe it’s the fact that I tend to stay in my room all weekend, which leads to people thinking I’m studying when in reality I am probably binge watching a TV show or maybe it’s my glasses, but most people who don’t know me too well assume that I am smart. Now that is a great thing for me because I don’t have to try as hard to impress them, but I end up finding myself in a bit of a problem. The problem is that everyone thinks I enjoy admiring school textbooks. But the truth is I’m usually admiring my Justin Bieber poster on my bedroom wall. Ever since I was in sixth grade I’ve been a huge fan of Bieber. His music always brought a feeling of calmness and back in the day his “never say never” motto, was what I lived by. I might still be living by that motto because I’ve decided to write this essay
The first piece of technology that was introduced to me was the amazing, ground-breaking GameBoy created by Nintendo. My parents believed that my obsession with video games in my juvenile years would be the cause of my downfall when I would become an adult with no job, no money, and still lived with my parents. I admit that I did have an addiction in the beginning, but over the years it moderated as I became more attracted to what was actually done to develop the devices and programs that once ensnared me. Enrolling into a vocational high school, I selected Programming & Web Development as my choice of trade in order for me to learn more about this extraordinary field of science. Soon I began compiling my own applications, but with a method unorthodox compared to my classmates; I believed that the vivid aesthetics and simple navigation displayed on applications were just as crucial as the tediously compiled, intricate code virtually hidden underneath. With every annual keynote that was broadcasted from numerous Silicon Valley companies, their latest innovations constantly entertained my curiosity. Advancing as an upperclassmen, I entered into challenging courses and incessantly researched innumerable universities as I began to devise a plan of recruitment for the companies of the Bay Area. Enrolling into a university that is passionate about the
I started studying health and nutrition when I joined Herbalife in August of 2014. I decided to study health and nutrition, because my weight was out of control and I wanted to find a way to live a healthier lifestyle. In 2014 I started making healthier food choices and along with exercising consistently, was able to drop twenty pounds in one month. Losing the weight led me to become a health and wellness trainer and to be a successful trainer I knew I had to increase my knowledge on health and nutrition.
After four years in the Air Force as an Arabic cryptologic language analyst, it is impossible to ignore the significance of technical literacy and keeping up with technological innovations. I strive to not only increase and maintain my literacy in these matters, but to contribute meaningfully in the form of software development. While the Air Force champions flexibility and maintaining technological superiority, opportunities to be creative and experimental occupationally are limited, especially as a linguist. As such, I decided to pursue education full time with a primary focus on computer science and software, fields that demand, not simply provide opportunities for, experimental and creative thinking.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s video announcement that city schools were starting a new program that will bring computer science education to all students is late. America is dragging where it should be exceling. Less than 10 percent of the city’s schools offer computer science education and only one percent receive that education. New Yorkers should still applaud their mayor for taking on this monumental task that states should have addressed years before this announcement because New York City isn’t alone in this failure, only one in four U.S. middle and high school principals report offering any computer science education in their schools.
Occupations in the field of computer science are considered to be “male” jobs. Women are increasingly less likely to enter the field than in years past. However, two of the first people that we were introduced to in our textbook as key people in the history of Computer Science are Ada Augusta and Grace Murray Hopper. The page limits of this paper do not allow the author to adequately describe all of the contributions that Grace made to Computer Science. Instead, you will be introduced to Grace Hopper and how her pioneering work on the Mark I continue to influence women and the world of computer science.
One year, I tagged along with my parents when they drove my brother and sister to Worldview Academy. Unfortunately, I forgot about the incident. That all changed, though, when I found myself enrolled at the same academy my siblings had previously attended. Since then, I have returned three times and this year served as my third and final “term”. After my enrollment, I concluded that I had discovered an anomaly, for I had never found myself more comfortable in a crowd of perfect strangers, nor so intrigued with academic subjects or experienced such an exhilarating time evangelizing as I had at the academy.
I was born and raised in the town of Mooresville, NC. It is, and always will be, the only place that I can truly call “home”. Everyone’s hospitality here has inspired me to always be considerate to anyone I meet. My parents and grandparents have also raised me to be myself and to always make the right decisions. They are my biggest fans and without their love and support, I would be lost. With their help, I was a participant on Teens Westward Bound (TWB) this past summer. It is a 23 day leadership program that takes 80 teenagers across America. This life-changing trip helped mold me into the person I am today, and the lessons I gained and information I learned will last me a lifetime. I am also fortunate enough to be part of an incredible school district that really cares about its students. Mooresville Graded School District made a digital conversion in 2007 that enabled almost every child to have access to a laptop. This transformation is what initially sparked my interest in computers. All of these factors have sculpted me into the intelligent and responsible young woman I am today, with the hope of creating a promising career in the field of computer science.
When I was in middle school, I had totally no idea of what Computer Science is, but I was pretty proficient in using computers at that age. The only thing that I knew about Computer Science is that one of my aunts is in that field and that’s all, nor of my parents are in that major. Not until in High School that I got the sense of what programming is like. I was taught basic simple codings and I really enjoyed it and thought that the class was actually quite fun. But the class didn’t give me any sense of the important real-world applications of Computer Science. Not until recently as I am in the Computer Science major, I started to really have the real idea and to gain real passion for the field. Computer Science is not all about programming.
Growing up in the late 90’s, I witnessed computers revolutionize India – we had cellphones and personal computers and the internet transforming our lives - and like most other kids, I was fascinated by them. It wasn’t until I took course on QBasic in 8th grade, however, that I really took a liking to computer programming. The idea of computer ‘languages’ seemed almost magical to me. Over the years, that proclivity for programming grew into a passion and led me to take more programming electives in higher grades. I also took the initiative to set up a student-run Computer Club in my high school and host our first annual Computer Symposium. My upbringing in Delhi also made me aware of the gaping inequalities of wealth distribution in our society and as my interest in Computer Science deepened, it only reinforced my belief that lean-technologies can help governments of developing countries in bringing their policies to the altar of execution more efficiently.
With technology rapidly changing as fast as we blink our eyes, it is important for people to learn as much as possible about the computer world if they want to maintain a decent lifestyle because the world we live in revolving around those technologies. As McKee points out, “most jobs now require intelligence and technical skill” (1). Each year, there is something either added or modified to computers, which forces people to learn computer literacy at a steady pace. While some love computers, others despise them. When comparing people’s attitudes towards computers, statistics show a gender gap that proves most females’ attitudes are drastically different from the attitudes of males. Several studies prove that women not only lack an interest in technology, but they also chose not to enroll in computer classes. Since computers and technology play an enormous role in the world today, more technology professionals are needed. It is extremely important for more women to become knowledgeable in these areas. Swain and Harvey argue, “This technology gender gap is affecting half our population and causing it to be unprepared to contribute to the demands of a high-tech twenty-first century” (17). While this may not seem like a serious issue to some, it is an issue that will ultimately lead to a bigger problem if not handled immediately. So why are there so few women in the technology field? To answer that question, I must first find out why are there so few women in the technology and computer classes, considering that this atmosphere is the most common place where the interest for computers is born.
By the time a student is in middle school he or she should be able to use software tools such as word processing , data bases, spreadsheets, and telecommunications. But the computer can be used for so much more. The computer can be used as a tutor or for research on any topic. As a tutor, the comput...
If the nineteenth century was an era of the Industrial revolution in Europe, I would say that computers and Information Technology have dominated since the twentieth century. The world today is a void without computers, be it healthcare, commerce or any other field, the industry won’t thrive without Information Technology and Computer Science. This ever-growing field of technology has aroused interest in me since my childhood. After my twelfth grade, the inherent ardor I held for Computer Science motivated me to do a bachelors degree in Information Technology. Programming and Math, a paragon of logic and reasoning, have always been my favorite subjects since childhood.
To begin something new, you must sacrifice something old. To enter the real world, you must graduate your childhood.