During my late years of highschool, I began to extensively explore and experiment with my interests and hobbies to decide on what I wanted to fully study and pursue once I got to college. Considering my 10 hour long iPhone screen time, it was clear that I definitely didn’t hate technology, nor did I hate the computer classes I took in middle school, so I decided to look more into computer science and programming.

In the midst of researching that career path and what it would insist on, I discovered that the popular computer science-based organization, Girls Who Code, offered what is called a Summer Immersion Program (SIP) whose goal was to teach girls all over the country the basics of coding in the male-dominated tech industry. I participated in the live, virtual course for two weeks during the summer of 2022, and although I was very hesitant to commit to signing onto Zoom everyday at 9 AM, I ended up really looking forward to it as the days went on.

Our mentors did a great job at guiding us through and teaching us the three most popular coding languages; Java Script, CSS, and HTML, as the rest of us girls followed along on the beginner coding website Replit. We were given little assignments/tasks to code on our own: such as using HTML to code and organize an entire webpage with different tabs, using CSS to fully customize and personalize our web pages with different colors and fonts, and using Java Script to make our websites fully interactive with buttons. We learned about the history of computer programming with Ada Lovelace, we learned about all of the inputs, and outputs, and functions. But most importantly during our sessions, since Girls Who Code is really passionate about building sisterhood, the other female participants and I were able to really get to know each other and our shared interests outside of technology and coding in breakout groups.

Although I ultimately decided to pursue a healthcare-oriented education in college, I still really enjoy technology and coding. It’s so intriguing to think about the thousands of lines of code that goes into a single website, let alone an entire app or program or game. I’ve always been big on creation, I love just creating things and then stepping back when it’s done to experience my creation. And I could do it just over and over again. And that’s the thing with programming, all you need is an idea or an inspiration (and some good internet connection) and you can fully make a dream into a reality.