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How I Got Started in Computer Science

I get asked why I chose to pursue a degree in Computer Science quite often, and to be honest, I don’t really have a great answer for anyone.

I never fit the stereotype of a “computer guru”. I was never a gamer, and I certainly didn’t find amusement out of taking computers apart and putting them back together again. So why CS?

I remember several years ago thinking up different ideas for apps that I thought would be useful, yet not having the skillset to create them. So when the pandemic started and everyone had to quarantine at home, I figured what better time to go back to school and finally finish that degree I’d been putting off for more years than I’d like to admit…

But I wasn’t finishing a degree in CS. I had about a year and a half left to complete my Bachelors in Business Administration. So I went back to school to finish that up. However, when registering for classes, I saw there was an Intro to CS course and I decided to take it along with my other business classes.

It was a disaster!

The professor had never taught a lower level CS course before, and he was thrown into it 2 or 3 days before the term started because of a health emergency with the original professor. Long story short, the assignments he would give us were way over our heads. Think assignments requiring 3D matrices by week 5. Most of us had never even written a single line of code prior to this course. Ugh!

Most of the students in the class had little to no coding background, and there were several students who claimed they were switching their degrees away from CS because of how ridiculous that class was.

Luckily, I was also taking a course on writing research papers, and decided to focus my final paper on the Implications of the Gender Gap in Computer Science. I was shocked at what I discovered. Yet, I wasn’t surprised.

One important stat I found was that during the 2017-2018 school year, women made up over 57% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S. Yet, only 18% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in computer science were to women. More women were pursuing their education, but less than a quarter of all CS majors were women.

The more I looked into the gender gap within this field, the more fired up I got about actually pursuing this degree instead of business. So I decided to take the next course in the Intro to CS sequence, and eventually switched my degree to Computer Science with a minor in Business. The more classes I took, the more I fell in love with the field.

I love how computer science works both sides of your brain. It can be used as a creative outlet, but also requires you to be very analytical and a problem solver. Hopefully this passion will continue to grow, and hopefully I can inspire other girls to at least give computer science a chance.