Girl Geeks in High School – Technical Experiences of Future Inventors

The following are the impressions of the above panel by the three presenters. Enjoy!

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I was very nervous to speak on the Girl Geeks in High School panel. However, it was actually really fun, partially because I enjoy public speaking. We took questions from the audience and spoke about the role of high school girls in technology and computer science. I have been interested in technology ever since I can remember, especially since my dad is an engineer, so this panel was right up my alley. This was a great learning experience for me and I hope I will have the opportunity to participate again in the near future.

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Though I wasn’t nervous going into the panel, my fear of public speaking caught up with me within seconds–sorry for rambling or jumbling my sentences…. Generally, though, I think the panel went well.

See, I’m secretly not half as techy as…everyone else here, it seems. Recently, with all the college apps I’ve been trying to fill out, I’ve realized that I really don’t know what I want to do at all. Both my parents are software engineers, and I’m on the robotics team at school (3-D animation sub-team), and high-tech certainly appeals to me, but I’ve never taken a computer programming course or participated in a techy internship. I’ve been surprised, though, at all the little ways I’ve found myself relating to the other women I’ve met so far at the conference. Their dedication and confidence are inspiring; it’s amazing how they’ve weathered the odds to pursue their passions.

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I walked onto the panel feeling much less apprehensive then I thought I would be. After listening to other panels all day, I was really excited about, well, everything CS-related. We came in with ~10 prepared questions that we had, as a group, discussed ahead of time, but other than that, I wasn’t quite sure what what to expect. After all, my thoughts and feelings about several of the topics had changed even from what I thought this morning, thanks to several of talks that I had heard before. We started out with several questions from before, but then people started asking questions from the audience. The panel, in my opinion, was much too short. The audience had some really good questions, and because there were 4 of us, we were vaguely restricted in how long our responses could be. But we all had so much to say, I wish we had had an extra session.

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This is Jessica writing. I too greatly enjoyed the panel–and if you read this in the next 5 minutes, go to “Mentoring Makes MAGIC for Middle and High School Girls” (Salon VIII). Picture posted.

Inspirational Quote:

“Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.” Grace Hopper

Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Official GHC 2007 Blogger
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