“Sorry, I cannot hold a parent-teacher conference with a minor.” I stood dumbstruck. Did I walk a mile in the rain just to be turned away? Then I realized. I was a 9-year-old who showed up by herself to her brother’s parent-teacher conference. I was used to assuming responsibility for parental tasks and being treated as an adult by my parents, so it did not cross my mind that this was not normal. My face immediately turned red with...

09/12/2020: 10 hours until hackathon projects are due. With limited time remaining on our final day of hacking, my team was in a race against time. At 10pm, we stared at the error: “FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.” It was our first time building a Flutter app, and with each new line of code in an attempt to resolve the error, we sensed greater feelings of hopelessness. But the beauty of collaboration lies in merging each person’s unique strengths to...

As a child, I was ingrained with a fixed image of what a girl can and cannot do. Since my parents grew up in a culture where women are encouraged to handle domestic affairs instead of pursuing careers that are not “gender-suitable,” I was encouraged to steer away from STEM fields and conform to socially prescribed roles. In fifth grade, I was introduced to computer science when my teacher taught me Scratch, kickstarting my love for programming. When my code...

When I participated in the MIT Online Science, Technology, and Engineering Community (MOSTEC) this past summer, I engaged in weekly discussions revolving around controversial STEM topics based on class readings with a cohort of highly-motivated, underserved and/or underrepresented students in science and engineering. Each discussion provided meaningful insight, but there was one that particularly stood out to me. The title of that week’s article: Anti-Vaxers Aren’t Stupid. Although vaccines have long been regarded as effective tools to...

My love for coding began in fifth grade when my teacher introduced me to Scratch. Computer science combines three of my favorite things: problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration. I started my journey building websites, and as I continued taking computing courses, I branched out to building mobile apps. My programs solve user-specific problems, design possible solutions, and execute them, bringing my ideas to fruition. However, when I took my first data science class, I was introduced to a new world of...