On April 17 I participated in an awesome panel event “The Wonder Women of STEM” hosted by the CU Denver WiSTEM group. My fellow panelists were extraordinary, and all had incredible and diverse careers. The food was also top notch, and I even got a certificate and Wonder Woman magnet. 🙂 I also really enjoyed the panel format. Each panelist got 10 minutes to talk about their career path and advice they would give to their former selves. Then we got up and were stationed around the room, and people could visit our ‘station’ to ask follow up questions.
During my 10 minute talk, I shared 3 main pieces of advice with students:
1. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
During my undergrad in Electrical Engineering, I constantly felt intimidated to ask questions because I thought everyone else already knew everything, and asking questions would make me look stupid. Fellow students constantly spouted off in class with “Isn’t it true that… ” type of statements, in attempts to publicly display how smart they were. I even had a professor tell our class that he didn’t think anyone should be let into the EE program if they hadn’t already built their own radio in high school. Ugh. I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to strategically only ask questions that I felt were “complex enough” to be valid, and ended up not asking a lot of questions that I should have.
When I started my transition from hardware to Android, I took a different approach. I certainly did a lot of research and struggled through plenty of problems on my own, but I also asked LOTS of questions. At every meetup and conference. Every time I met an Android developer. I asked questions.
I decided “I don’t care if they think I’m stupid for asking this question. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering for crying out loud. I’m not stupid, I’m just new to Android and I’m a fast learner.” So I asked the questions. And guess what? Nothing terrible ended up happening! Nobody black balled me from development and I didn’t die.
I wish I could have taken that attitude during undergrad: “I don’t care if they think I’m stupid for asking this question. I know I am smart. I’m not stupid, I’m just new to Electrical Engineering and I’m a fast learner.”
2. Don’t be afraid to take a step down, to step sideways.
When you are in college you are pretty focused on your major, and nobody ever talks about that fact that one day you might want to change your career trajectory, that it is okay, or how to go about it.
Sometimes if you want to shift into a new area, you have to accept a more junior position to get your foot in the door. Moving down the ladder is scary, because you feel like you might be throwing away everything you’ve been working on for the last x years. But really, staying some place you aren’t really happy is way worse! If you are smart and a hard worker you’re going to move back up and then some.
3. Start saying yes and following through.
I heard a talk by Elaine Wood, CEO of Wayin, when she mentioned that people’s biggest barriers to moving up is themselves. She gives people advice all the time, and not many people actually take it. I was surprised to hear that, but upon reflection I realized I had probably talked myself out of things because they seemed too intimidating. So I promised myself that I would start saying yes to every offer for help and piece of advice I got.
WOW did my life change! Suddenly opportunities started rolling in faster than I could handle. And the snowball effect really started to come into play; each opportunity I said yes to, lead to even more opportunities. It was really incredible.
During the breakout session I got some really good questions from students. Here are my favorites:
“You sound like you’ve always known that you wanted to do this…”
This comment surprised me, because actually the opposite is true! I spent the first half of my life pursuing musical theater professionally, with plans of moving to New York as soon as I graduated high school. Then I sang and wrote music for a few years as a solo artist. At the same time I was getting really interested in math, and I got a big scholarship to the CU Engineering school. Then right before high school graduation I had an existential crisis, and changed my major to Political Science with plans to pursue a Law Degree (losing my engineering scholarship in the process!). I switched back to Engineering after my first semester, yet I wondered more than once during the course of my degree if I’d made the right decision. (These thoughts usually came to me as I sat in the 2nd basement windowless lab at 2 in the morning working on board layouts.)
I have been all over the place, because I find almost everything fascinating and fun. I didn’t mention it in my panel intro, because I was afraid I’d blab too long if I brought any of this stuff up. But now I know I really should have! It is important to recognize that most people aren’t born knowing their calling. Everyone grows and changes, and has multiple interests throughout their life. You can be great at something even if it isn’t your only interest, and even if you sometimes doubt yourself. That is just life, and that is okay. Next time, I’ll be sure to mention it.
“What are some things that professional developers do that I’m probably not doing?”
Most of the students were bio or pre-med students, but some of them were using Matlab to automate some tasks for themselves. How awesome! The big one that most people were excited about was real version control. Most of them were already doing their own version control (saving multiple copies of a file with names like “BeforeAddingTheThing” and “AfterAddingTheThing”.
I explained some basic concepts of git, and told them about github and bit bucket. They were pretty excited at the idea of version control, and not having to manage that all themselves. Yay! I hope they try it out.
“How can I learn to program?”
This was another great question! I was really excited when students asked me this. Programming on the side can help so many people work faster and more efficiently. A lot of students were already using Matlab for things that they figured didn’t necessarily require Matlab, but didn’t know how else to do it. They also felt constrained, because they wanted to share their Matlab script with other colleagues, but not everyone has a Matlab license.
I pointed them to Python and Team Treehouse. Python is a great scripting language that is easy to pick up, especially if you already know Matlab! It is easy to share between friends and colleagues because it doesn’t require any costly licenses, and there are tons of resources online to learn.
I had a really amazing time at the event. Thanks for inviting me, WiSTEM CU Denver!