My Story
At age 8, I was lucky enough to have access to a great summer coding camp named, "ID Tech". This camp offered classes specializing in Minecraft coding (Javascript) so I could explore the idea of designing my own mod. One of my counselors, a student at RIT, was majoring in game design. I knew, from that moment, I wanted to be at that school when I was older. Learning game design helped me feel like I was with my people! It also made me realize girls my age were not being told it is okay to game and design game platforms. As I went into middle school, I discovered woodshop and tech classes. I knew that I wanted to continue this journey in high school. But when I showed up to the woodshop, the first day of my freshman year, it was all boys and one other girl who was older than me. I joined a private robotics team and further discovered my love of 3D design. I have been able to explore engineering drawing in my current class, Design and Drawing for Production.
My Project
I will be working with team of people including: my sponsor (director of our school system’s guidance department), the assistant superintendent for our school system, engineer and family friend Victoria Pavsic and her colleagues/friends who are female engineers, Honor Society Students, and the Audio/Visual department of my school.
This team will help me to reach the young students through a guidance assembly to show the girls (all students) the electives available to them in the middle school and high school level and the career pathways these classes lead to. In addition, I would like to create virtual tours of the elective classes from the student’s perspective and change our current class catalog to a online/virtual platform for students with disabilities (all students should have access to what classes are available to them and the order they should be taken in). My project will hopefully evolve into the future and carry on after my graduation.