A First Year College Student’s Experience at the Grace Hopper Celebration

After submitting my application for the AnitaB.org scholarship and getting accepted for a spot as a student scholar, I was so excited to be a part of this amazing gathering of inspirational women. I have learned a lot from this conference and want to document my experience for my own process of self-reflection and to help others as well.

Although I was very excited to have this opportunity, the trade-offs were overwhelming. My many concerns included that it was the week before midterms and I was missing four days of school and the other being that I was wasting the experience because I had nothing to contribute as a first year student having little background with coding and computer science in general.

It is easy to be discouraged when you feel as if you are lacking in comparison with other students. However, be reminded that in an environment created to empower women, everyone is welcoming to your opinions, ideas, and curiosity.

In all honesty, I may have arrived with a negative outlook on the upcoming experience as I was too focused on the short-term results rather than the long-term character development. As a first-year student, it is true that I may not have much to offer to conversation about high-tech innovations and workplace anecdotes, but being there in itself is an inspiration to many other women in tech to see young students taking an initiative and joining a movement. I learned so much about the variety of careers in the industry and left with a renewed motivation to work hard and become an individual in tech who would one day be able to come back to such a conference and be a mentor for many more students.

My best pieces of advice (takeaway):

1. Don’t come with a goal in mind to get an internship or be invited to an after party. You still have long ways to go before that will become a matter of importance.

2. Look at companies you are interested in talking to beforehand, so that you can ask more specific questions and get a chance to speak one-on-one with a recruiter for future applications.

3. Ask recruiters to look at your resume and ask for ways to improve or stand out: under activities add the impact of your involvement and what you gained from the opportunity, start a github for personal projects if you have any, and update your resume by removing any information irrelevant to the conference.

4. Talk to everyone. Even when you’re waiting in line for coffee, talk to the people around you (they are most likely not doing anything important and will give you the best advice). If you talk to someone about something substantial for more than five minutes, you can most definitely connect with them on LinkedIn. Even if this doesn’t build a long- lasting network, you become more in touch with what is going on in the industry.

5. Don’t feel pressured to go to the after parties and networking events, they are very fun and you will meet more people, but sometimes you need to stay back in your hotel room and get your homework done to relieve anxiety.

6. Wake up early to make it to the Convention Center on time because you want to make sure you can get a good breakfast in. The lines to eat are so long inside hotels and nearby areas because there are at least a hundred scholars in each hotel.

7. Lastly, have fun. If you spend all your time being hard on yourself and placing unrealistic expectations, you will never get to live in the moment and get the most out of any experience.

I will never regret my experience here at GHC 18 and I hope to come again very soon to be introduced to a whole new world once again. I am so glad to have met so many people here and I am so proud to be woman in tech!