the thorns on my rose

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My life is like a rose. I grow every day, becoming smarter, stronger, and braver.

This growth is caused by the soil below me, which is filled with the nutrition of my upbringing and education. The stem carries this nutrition upwards and transforms it into fruitful qualities that make me the best girl I can be.

The stem is split into four parts - science, technology, engineering, and math. Each of those paths are riddled with sharp thorns that threaten to poke me as I try to climb higher.

Unlike a lot of other girls like me, I don’t face a lot of discrimination because of my gender. Fortunately, I’ve had a pretty open path so far. However, the thorns on my stem are my own personal struggle to get onto that path - and stay on. Here’s my story.

The path I chose was technology. I started it from a young age - 8 years old - by exploring Scratch, a basic, fun coding platform that allows kids ages 7-12 to create their own games and programs by dragging and dropping colored code blocks together. I had a lot of fun creating and drawing different characters to include in my games and adding music/sound effects. However, whenever I got to the actual coding, I would slack off and ask for help at even the slightest struggle - or just copy step-by-step instructions in a book without really understanding them.

Needless to say, this wasn’t going to get me a lot of “nutrition” later in life. I soon learned that I had to persevere, and not just give up right away. I started getting more creative and thinking of my own solutions to bugs instead of just asking my dad to fix everything. In 4th grade, when I was able to freely code on my own, I joined my school’s Science Olympiad team to participate in their Pro Gamers coding event. With the help of my 5th-grade partner, we won first prize!

I felt happy, talented, and powerful. Coding is easy! I thought. Then I started learning Python.

Python is a real programming language that actual developers use. I came expecting to know all the basics already. It couldn’t be that different from Scratch, right?

Wrong. Python was like the polar opposite of Scratch. It was much harder, made no sense to my beginner-programmer brain, looked ugly, had only one font, didn’t have cool colors or images, didn’t let me draw or add music, didn’t let me pick characters… the list went on and on. Within 10 minutes, I was flopped on my bed in frustration. “It doesn’t make sense,” I complained. “It’s too hard. Why can’t I do scratch instead?” My father told me Scratch wasn’t powerful enough to create the programs that would bring me success.

Yet I didn’t want to learn Python - didn’t want to learn to code at all. I just didn’t see the point. Why do STEM? It was boring, difficult, and a waste of time. I could be reading, or drawing, or hanging out with my friends.

For years I dodged any real progress. I would code occasionally to show off to my friends or in technology class, but that was about it. The only time I really got into it was when there was a reward at stake. Often times, that reward was video games. I was obsessed with a variety of video games like Genshin Impact and Pokemon, and every weekend I would code in Python to earn an hour of game time.

These incentives worked, though. I would still shy away from challenges, but the more I coded the more I realized that I actually enjoyed it sometimes. I started to give more effort, adding my own creativity to my programs instead of just coding what my dad told me to code.

Recently, I’ve started to code on my own - which is a big milestone to me. I had thought, Why code when I don’t get to play video games? There’s no reward. But I’ve started to realize that there actually is a reward - the thrill I get when my programs run flawlessly and deliver the result I worked so hard for. Of course, getting there requires a lot of effort.

But I’m willing to brave the thorns, if only I can get a taste of the sweet nectar that awaits me. I know it’s there… I just have to keep growing, and I’ll reach it.

After all, all roses have their thorns.

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