3 Pieces of Advice for Girls in STEM

I joined Team 3595 Schrodinger's Hat two years ago when I moved to Northern Virginia from New Orleans. I appreciate the high school I attended for adopting such an amazing program, for which inspired me and gave me the chance to this huge family. With this opportunity provided, I’d like to give a few advice based on my personal experience on my teams. ​

I found science and technology in an all girl school to be a huge success. Girls can get the most from it by following through their unique ideas. Later on in my experience I respected the all girl school that would focus on STEM education because it is crucial for many young girls. School has to have good leading teachers for science department, someone that loves kids and technology. They can really make a difference in young lady's life.

In the past three years of my experience in FIRST, I considered doing FTC is the most rewarding experience I had in my life. Being on a two person team means that we got to overlap on almost every aspects of FTC. I am involved in designing, building, outreach and notebooking.

The benefits FIRST gets you may impact your life. It requires rational thinking which makes you take many factors in when compromising on one decision; It builds your team work ability, sometimes it is worth sacrificing part of yourself for the betterness of the whole team.
I have three advice for young girls not limited to doing only STEM.

1. Always be brave about the things you are interested in. Even if this is something that you never involved in or you were not very good at, go ahead and take the challenge! Personally speaking, I never heard about FIRST and had never thought that students can build robot. Upon I took a position on the team, I quickly adapt to the environment and caught on other’s pace.
2. Don’t hesitate to ask questions. The sea of knowledge is boundless therefore no one understands everything. Keep in mind that it is always okay to be curious. I personally prefer to ask my mentors or teammates broader questions, then seek clarifications from Google. I think this is the most efficient way for both whom you asked and yourself.
3. Seize any opportunity that you can possibly get well. Whether it is an in school presentation to the student body or community events demo, you should always be excited about it! This can be a great chance to allow you to do more research about the topic you’ve been long interested in, and inspire more girls to find their passion in STEM.​

This era is ever-increasing. The first AI restaurant is now opened in Beijing, China. There are no chiefs or staffs there. Everything there is computer-based and engineering-based. The future will definitely rely on this. STEM will always seek a large number of intelligent people. Listen to your gut, and you will be success.
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This blog was written by Sunny Pan from FTC Team Schrödinger's Hat (FTC 3595). If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!