15 November 2015: My Enjoyable Experience at Stanford University

I wish I brought my camera because the Stanford campus was so beautiful! Tall, shady trees with golden and purple colored leaves adorned the field. The weather was lovely as the sun was out, but the air was breezy... It was actually raining heavily, early morning. I visited the Stanford campus today, Sunday, November 15, 2015 for an engineering class field trip. It was an engineering event for only girls. The purpose of this field trip was to promote engineering for girls in what would otherwise be a male-dominated career choice, and I must say I learned quite a lot from the experience. We received information about college and STEM jobs from successful Stanford grad and undergraduate students. Most of them were dressed very professional and businesslike, and one woman even started several start-ups in the Silicon Valley. To be honest, before attending this field trip, like many other common people, I thought that engineering was boring. However, after talking with educated female engineers, my outlook on engineering changed completely. I am still not completely sure if I want to pursue the engineering career pathway, but I found engineering to be interesting. I mean, there are so many diverse fields to explore: biomedical, mechanical, civil, computer science, etc. These fields impact the world positively. Approximately a decade ago, Columbia Business School performed a research study, in which they requested students to assess the feats listed on the resume of a fake "Howard Roizen (male)." At the end, the students called Heidi Roizen "more selfish and less desirable" than Howard. Nevertheless, Heidi and "Howard's" resume were exactly the same. Sexism is a major conflict in the Silicon Valley itself. Also, studies have shown that women in engineering make a third less than men. Women engineers are very courageous and diligent; they have overcome many biased stereotypes saying what women should and should not be. Also, they have probably been one of the only women in their engineering college classes. For that, I applaud these women for bringing a new face to the future of engineering, and for doing their own thing, despite outside barriers or stereotypes. The women engineers that talked to our group of high school freshman told us that they were remembered as the only female in the class, and they obviously deserve to be remembered, because of their open, highly enriched minds.