Emily Bu

Hello! I was wondering, when will you email us the results for the contest? Thanks! -Emily :)

I walked straight into the room. 28 people. 5 girls. 23 boys. Of all the girls in the middle school, only 5 had chosen to take part in robotics, had chosen to take part in an area in which we were alone, in risk of being damaged mentally. I watched as a girl walked into the classroom, hesitated, and turned back, as she could not stand to look at the towering groups of boys. I knew what she was thinking. Her expression said it all. Those smug sexist boys. Don’t walk away. Please don’t leave me alone. Stay. My pleads were left unheard. I shrunk smaller and smaller into my seat, suddenly embarrassed that I had come in the first place and was fighting the urge to just leave. I was just a girl, after all, hardly knowing anything about robotics or how to code. After the interest meeting, I pondered my return. What chance did I have against all of those boys? I had been judged too many times. The time when no one in the class said anything when I had scored the highest, simply because I was a girl. Of course, all had plenty to say when two boys had scored 100. Or the times when boys ignored my shouts of ‘I’m open!’ in gym class because they doubted my ability to catch the ball. I looked up at room B-12. The world of girls needed me, and I had to represent all of them despite if I was jeered. I took out my agenda and marked the date of the next robotics meeting. … For the next few weeks, I had made new friends and had formed a team. We were the Wolf Pack, but more specifically, the only team with boys and girls. Despite this crushing fact, we spent everyday planning for the big competition, expanding our Lego creations, coding them, and advancing our prototype. I aided our team to create a presentation explaining our ideas on decreasing the number of damaged packages and helped in building our robot. The other teams that had read our presentation swatted aside our strategies, claiming their ideas were more realistic and would more likely impress the judges. A group of boys was better than a diverse team, they seemed to say. I thought of the girl who had left the room on the first day. Would I give them the satisfaction she had given the boys? On the day of the competition, we all watched tensely as our robot competed with the others. It didn’t score very high. I watched, infuriated, as the expressions on the other teams’ faces read ‘ha-ha, we knew you weren’t good enough.’ However, when our presentation scored first place, I enjoyed cheering loudly, stealing glances at the dumbstruck boys. It was time. Of the four teams, only two would advance to the next round. I held my breath as the judges gave us their final answer. Thank you for giving me the strength to stay.

Hello! I'm new to this website and I want to enter the 'share your story' contest. At the end of the google form that needs to be filled out in order to enter the contest, it says that we need to scan a QR code. I'm not sure where that is 🤔 Thank you so much !