Personal Statement
“Stop studying math so hard, girl. How will math help you?” My high school classmate Yijie jeered at me when I told him I wanted to major in mathematics and computer science. “Such complex subjects are just not suitable for women.” Although Yijie was not an old-fashioned person, he insisted that women were inferior in high technology fields. In my country, China, this gender stereotype still affects women’s lives, from major placement decision to their career path choice. I strongly oppose this constraining opinion, and firmly believe that women are capable to make great achievements in modern high technology as men do. Therefore, I made up my mind to show people that women can also succeed in mathematics and computer science. I have been committed to mathematics and computing since I was young. My parents are both accountants. They taught me a lot math and computer skills in my childhood. Their love and passion towards math and computing had a huge impact on me. As I went to school, math and computer science immediately attracted me. Its logicality and challenge gave me a deep sense of satisfaction. I enjoyed challenging fixed answers and finding new ways to solve problems. Compared to my peers, I always understood math and computer problems faster and more accurately. Furthermore, I fortunately had a great woman math teacher in my junior high school. As she discovered my devotion and potential in math, she encouraged me to join competitions and
Pursing a career as a medical doctor is an opportunity for me to mentor youth in underserved populations. As a child, I was raised in the low income, urban community of Roxbury, MA. Although not as notorious today, the neighborhood had garnered negative attention for its high crime rates. My mother emigrated from Haiti and raised me as a single parent. Due to our financial circumstance, Roxbury became our permanent residence. I have always felt there was something lacking in Roxbury in comparison to other towns I visited. My teenage years were largely spent in the suburban town of Stoneham where I attended high school. There was a literal difference in air quality and a psychology contrast in future prospects. While native students of
There are few certainties of what one will encounter during life. A common joke names two: death and
Women in the Math World Works Cited Not Included Math is commonly known as the man’s major. Many college math professors are men and the same goes for their students. "One study revealed that women accounted for 15% of students in computer science, 16% in electrical engineering,. . . Gender splits in the faculty were similar" (Cukier).
My passion for mathematics was fixed at the age of ten, on the morning that my mathematics teacher told I would be sitting the Junior Maths Challenge, 'as practice for when you are older'. As I nervously started to answer the questions, a whole world began to open before me. I revelled in the problem solving, answering questions of a nature I had not seen before. My teachers were delighted when I emerged from the exam hungry for more. Since then I have consistently demonstrated my aptitude, achieving gold awards through to senior level, and scoring highly in the European Kangaroo.
Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex, and society will continue to view them that way unless they do something about it. In the essay “When Bright Girls Decide that Math is a Waste of time”, the author Susan Jacoby discusses the problems women steering clear of math and science subjects because of the traditional view of a woman. She focused on what causes high school girls to focus on arts courses instead of STEM courses and what are the effects of it on themselves. The underlying discrimination amongst boys and girls, stereotypical thinking of parents and teachers that girls are not good at math eventually decreases the self-confidence among girls to solve science and math problems.
I was born the fourth of December 1991 in Cranbrook British Columbia. I lived there for 18 years. Before joining the military I worked as a fry cook at a Burger King for three years and held part time jobs working for the College of the Rockies summer camp programs during the summer. My parents are currently living together in Cranbrook BC. My father works outside the province testing railway tracks for two months at a time, then returns home for two to three weeks. My mother acts as the main contact point of the family, she works as a financial clerk. I have a 22 year old sister who will be attending university in Calgary this September. I attended Mount Baker Secondary School in Cranbrook and graduated in 2009
The benefits and opportunities to embrace engineering far outweigh the difficulties in the process, but despite this, my pure love for mathematics has been the major contributor to my ambitions. From a young age, I found math incredibly enjoyable. The order and consistency found through something as simple as the order of operations served as a driving force to my curiosity and dedication to the subject. As the mathematical concepts intensified, I was able to adequately keep up and enjoy the journey along the way. While signing up for my senior year classes, the decision to take calculus was made easily. While speaking with the instructor, Yvonne Sebastian, I discovered that her love for math was derived from similar feelings. In an interview with Sebastian, she stated, “Math is a beautiful thing. Numbers are incredibly simple, but they can be used to calculate very complex scenarios. No matter how difficult a problem may seem, there is always a solution, an answer that can be found and understood through the power of math” (Y. Sebastian, personal communication, February 14, 2017). Interacting with a teacher who understood to a great level of degree my similar feelings regarding math has been an incredible motivator in my desire to pursue a career which incorporates mathematics frequently. For any individual to be happy with their occupation, I would argue that they must experience a desire to progress
From an early age, I was very gifted in math. I remember in kindergarten when all my classmates were so confused how I could count without using my fingers. They would ask me questions and tell me to teach them how to do it too. Every year in high school, I was asked to go to competitions involving mathematics. So, with this gift I figured a major I would be great at would be computer science. It is one of the most math heavy majors out there. I have come to realize that computer science is much more than math. I find myself typing and reading more words than numbers. This was definitely an issue for me because reading has always been a weakness of mine. I just never enjoyed
Since I can remember, math has always been easy and exciting to me. In high school, the only classes I looked forward to involved math – other than sports. Upon entering college at Eastern Oklahoma State College on an academic and cheerleading scholarship, I chose mathematics as my major. When I came to Oklahoma State University in 2011, I was extremely unsure of what I wanted to study. I started out in architectural engineering because I knew that I loved math and numbers, as well as drawing and designing things. After a semester or so, I realized that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would and didn’t think I could build a career with it. I pursued another direction and changed my major to applied mathematics. I still wasn’t happy with my decision but was unsure on what to do next. During my second year at Oklahoma State, I joined the Cowboy Baseball Diamond Dolls. After getting to know some of the girls, I learned that some of them were in the sports management program. They all
There are an abundant amount of subjects that peak my interests, but mathematics will always be the one subject that intellectually excites me. At times, it is able to both challenge me to the point of frustration, but it later gives me excessive excitement and happiness for overcoming the challenge. Similarly, it is like a wave flooding in shore because it is at first harsh and difficult, but it gradually smoothes and simplifies. It is a subject that I can fully interact and manipulate it to the best possible way of understanding it, which I fondly love because I learn better hands-on. However, it was truly benevolent instructors, who increased my love in math and enlighten a new way of
As a mathematics major, the concept that most people overlook is that I did not choose to study mathematics because I do well at it; I chose to study mathematics because it makes me smarter. In fact, all throughout junior high and high school I was in remedial mathematics classes and worse, I did not even place into a freshman year mathematics class in high school. I had to re-take 8th grade mathematics. However, something about mathematics excited me. Maybe it was the fact that mathematics never came easy to me and I wanted to prove to myself that not only could I pass mathematics classes, I could actually understand and excel at them. For me, mathematics is not about the arbitrary numbers, trivial solutions, meaningless formulas, or repetitive computation: it is about the progress of knowledge and human understanding.
Mathematics – The subject captured my interest since I was a kid. The conceptual understanding and the logical application to the problems was a workout to my brain, which had glued me to the subject. My fascination for the subject made me participate in “Ramanujan Talent Test” in which I secured
areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics employers are not getting enough women (Pozniak). High school girls only represent 17 percent of computer science Advance Placement (AP) test takers (O'Shea). The most significant group of minorities who are behind in earning computer technology degrees and working in science and mathematical professions are women. “Historically, women’s low representation in science and engineering was said to be due in large part of their lack of ability, interest, or both” (Horning 30). However, this is no longer a true fact according to Ward. Some suggestions to increasing the amount of women in sciences include introducing already present women faculty as mentors. Over the last three decades,
Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Systems are international qualifications, enabling people to work globally, and in a very broad variety of roles. There is steady growth in demand for technically adept and flexible IT graduates. Declining student enrollment, while growth continues in law, medicine, biology, economics, and business; the decline among women is particularly alarming (Klawe and Shneiderman 27). Computer science is now a part of everyone’s daily life through the innovations and technologies it enables. From transforming health care to enabling a more robust national defense, computer science is on the forefront of discovery, driving economic growth and transforming our
Since my school days, I have been interested in Mathematics because the challenge of thinking and the process of logic always attracted me to Mathematical problems. With my