On March 21 of 2015, the Twelfth Annual Explore Your Opportunities‚ÄîThe Sky’s the Limit! Conference took place at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. This conference helped seventh grade girls become more aware of career paths in STEM (Science Technology Engineering).

My teacher at school had admission forms to this conference. We had to choose four different workshops that we would like to take out of about ten. I personally chose the workshops that involved computers and robotics. Even though we were supposed to pick four workshops, in the end, we would only get two. After we sent the form, we had to wait for an email that stated we were signed up for the conference.

To get to the college I took the subway, then I took a shuttle bus. On the bus, I saw two of my classmates. When the three of us from school arrived at the campus, we went to the cafeteria and met our teacher and other students who arrived before us. My other friends who were coming had not arrived from the subway yet.

They had tables with folders, backpacks, and water bottles for the students. In the folder were various forms that we had to fill out and a booklet for a “mystery woman” game. They also supplied breakfast muffins and juice. I personally did not choose to play the game, but all of my other friends did. Around nine ‘o’clock, we were sent to the auditorium where they were having the keynote. The main speaker was Karen Jacobsen. Karen Jacobsen is originally from Australia, but now lives in the United States. She is the voice for the Australian Siri in the iPhone, and her voice is in millions of GPSs.

During the keynote, my other friends finally arrived. However, I did not get a chance to greet them because I had to go to my first workshop, Plant Superhighways. In this workshop, I learned about the passageways in plants where water and nutrients are delivered. After the first workshop, I met with some of my friends, and then left for my second workshop. My second workshop was about programing robots. In this class, we had to program robots so that they would travel to a certain spot in the hallway.
When the workshops were finished, we all met in the auditorium, and then went to have lunch. For lunch they had pizza, chicken fingers, and iced tea. After lunch, the conference was finished and we were free to go.

I personally became interested in STEM during my time at elementary school. At my school, they had book fairs. Once when I was looking for new books, I saw that they had kits to construct your own robot out of a soda can. While making my robot, I thought about doing this for a job. Ever since then, I have decided that I want to be an inventor/engineer.

-Lily J.
Guest Contributor