I have always loved languages. This began very early as one of my favorite pastimes: reading. On family car rides, I could often be found engrossed in a book, only surfacing to ask for the definition of a word I hadn't run into yet and not noticing someone was trying to get my attention until around the fourth time. When I began taking piano lessons as a first grader, the only things I knew about music were that the notes in the music worked together like the words did in books, and that piano could be quite difficult sometimes. Fast forward eight years, and I was still taking lessons. As a freshman in high school, I was in my third year of show choir, trying out golf for the first time, enjoying my fifth year of Spanish, and adjusting to a new school environment; piano lessons got to be a little too much, but I still enjoyed playing in my free time and began accompanying my parish's youth choir. And when I heard about CodeCrush, a girls' technology immersion camp at UNO, I decided to apply because I knew I had always been good with technology, and I thought it might be fun. But you may be wondering, what do all these things have in common?
Although they all started as simple pastimes and fun activities, languages, music, and technology have all become significant parts of my identity. To this day, some of my most frequent Google searches are for the etymology and definitions of words, and I still love to read (when I can find the time). After eight years of Spanish in grade school and high school and completing almost the entire Duolingo course, I have decided to pursue a minor in Spanish, and I plan to continue developing my Spanish language skills with a goal of being a bilingual resource in my future workplace. I have graduated from my high school youth choir to a college worship team at a religious community near my dorm, and I still enjoy playing piano recreationally. However, technology is the passion that has had the most profound effect on me recently.
After CodeCrush my freshman year of high school, I spent much of my free time learning computer basics and coding languages. My senior year, I was able to take a computer science principles course at my high school. In this class, we learned more about what I had pursued on my own; we were also introduced to computer safety and cybersecurity topics, which I found very interesting as well. As I've begun college classes, I have greatly enjoyed my computer science and information security courses so far, and I can't wait to learn more about the field of computer science and the widespread applications it can have as a future career.