#iAspire, My Experience with the Aspirations in Computing Award
In my senior year of high school (2015-2016), I won the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing Award for Connecticut. This award is given to young women in high school who show an active interest and/or involvement with computing. I wasn't really interest in computer science at the time, at least not the way it was taught as school, but I did a lot of STEM outreach through Girl Scouts. I wrote about that outreach, which was also my Gold Award project that was in progress at the time. I knew I wanted to go into electrical engineering, because of multiple summer camps in previous years where I fell in love with hardware, but because of my computer science class, I had my doubts. By earning this award I knew that people believed in me and my passion for education and STEM. I was also introduced to a vast community of people from different backgrounds with a thing in common, code and STEM. Being in the community offered a space for information a