When I came into college, I was a math major. It didn't take much of a "yes" to get on that path; it was more of a not saying "no". Math was something I generally liked, something I was good at, and something that had career opportunities for that scary post-grad future. So why not? I'd be a math major.
When I took my first computer science course, it wasn't so much of a "yes" that made me register for CS101, but a "fine". I needed to concentrate in a science in order to fulfill the BS requirements for a math major, and all the other sciences were just the worst. Biology? No thank you. Chemistry? Nope. Physics? Absolutely not. Computer science? ...Fine. So I'd take a CS course or two.
I had never taken a computer science course before, and I had no idea what to expect. My first surprise came on my first day of the course: in a class of about 50 students, there were roughly 10 girls and 40 boys. I was confused; in my math courses the gender split was about 50/50, so I thought the stereotype that girls don't pursue STEM fields was dead. Oops, wrong.
As it turns out, tons of smart and logical girls who would excel in CS were intimidated by the boys' club, the mental image of nerdy IT guys playing video games and hacking websites. I had entered the field of CS through a very passive "yes", but I knew that passive wasn't going to cut it anymore. Passive wasn't going to get me a job for an amazing tech company, passive wasn't the way to program solutions to global problems, and passive certainly wasn't going to open the doors for other girls to learn to code and change the world.
So my "yes"es became more active. Every time I raised my hand in class to ask a question, solve a problem, point out an error, the guys would hear my voice and wonder, is that a girl in this CS class? Yes. When I flew across the country by myself to attend a conference for Women in Computing, was I scared? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes. When I signed up to teach high school students an introductory CS course, was it for my own good? Yes. For the good of young girls and all students to take the intimidation out of computer science? Yes. To inspire my female peers to take the lead and open doors as well? Yes.
If I'm being honest, I'm still intimidated by all sorts of aspects of computer science today. The guys who have been coding since they could type, the recruiters that nail you with tough interview questions, the hundreds of lines of code that make up a homework problem--they all give me a good scare. But to use computer science terms...
def opportunity(reaction):
if reaction == 'Yes Please!':
print 'Success!'
else:
return opportunity('no')
If I say no to opportunities that scare me, I may get stuck in an infinite loop. But if I say "Yes, Please!", my code might just return Success.
