She misses the experience. At first, she had found it difficult to adjust to her new schedule. It felt weird not carpooling to Palo Alto every morning and not spending the entire day behind glowing laptop screens filled with code.
On June 22, junior Carol Wang started her four weeks of the Girls Who Code program in Palo Alto.
Girls Who Code is a month long program dedicated to help girls enhance their computer science skills, and with the new people she met and the new opportunities that the program opened for her, Wang believes that the four weeks were a fun and useful experience.
“All the communication, and opportunities to work together,” Wang said, “ really helped boost my own confidence as well as allowed me to be exposed to more new ideas.”
During the program, Wang was given the opportunity to work with a group of girls and create an app and was very happy when she was able to get the basic parts of the app to work. While they created the app, the girls learned to work together and complement each other’s skills, forming strong friendships.
“I miss all the girls in it, especially because many of the girls came from really far places,” Wang said, “but we still keep in contact through facebook, linkedIn, stuff like that.”
Even though the program is over, Wang does not feel a staggering sense of loss. Although she initially couldn’t believe that the program ended, she and her GWC friends have found a way to cope with the end of the program.
“Our group is still working on [the app] together,” Wang said. “I put my energy into improving the app, so basically I became absorbed back into the project, and still felt like I was really involved in the program”.
This way, Wang can continue the coding part of the program and stay in touch with her friends. However, the teachers and mentors were also a large part of the overall environment and Wang has found a way to stay close to them as well.
Wang had a wonderful experience, and she recommends that others girls should give it a try as well. She misses the people and the atmosphere and does not regret her time at Girls Who Code.
“I still got a lot out of it, I guess that is what matters,” she said. “I was happy the whole time, even on the last day”.
