Athletics have always been a part of Grace’s life, and she was thrilled at the opportunity to continue playing in college. At Bryn Mawr, she found a supportive community that included people from athletics, academics, and her dorm. This gave her the confidence to step outside of her comfort zone and pursue a minor in computer science. Grace combined her passions for computer science and people in her work at the organization Girls Who Code, which provides high school girls the opportunity to discover computer science.
Why Bryn Mawr: “The thing that really sold it to me was coming here and seeing the community, and seeing how it’s not just the community of students, but it’s the community of students and professors, and it’s the community of the staff. And everyone’s in it together to make this place the best place it can be.”
Fighting for a common goal: “One of the things I really love about the lacrosse team is our focus on goals. Our goals are something that we really come back to and focus on and use to power us forward and to keep us going. I think like most teams at Bryn Mawr we’re a very determined group and we want to continue to do better than we’ve done before, whether it is better than we did yesterday, or better than the game we played last week. I know that personally I always want to keep getting better, and seeing your teammates work hard and fight for the same things you’re fighting for is something that always inspires me to work harder.”
A different perspective: “Being a scholar athlete means bringing a different perspective to things. I think athletics enhances my academics because I’m able to bring a different perspective to my classrooms, to my professors, to different situations. Being on a team provides you with so many opportunities and gives you so many different situations that you have to work through and learn from.”
Why Computer Science: “I didn’t think I was going to like it, I didn’t think I would be good at it, but it filled a requirement and I thought it might be interesting. I knew that Bryn Mawr had the support system behind me. Taking that risk of taking a class I wasn’t really sure I was going to like was safe because there were people here to help me through it, and taking that risk paid off.”
Girls Who Code: “I didn’t take computer science until my sophomore year and it’s what I want to do in the future with my career, but I would have loved to discover it earlier. Exposure to computer science is something that is lacking for a lot of girls so being able to be a part of an organization that is helping to fix that problem was really great. Seeing the girls discover that computer science could be what they wanted it to be, and that they could use it to solve the problems that they’re passionate about was really wonderful. They all had different interests and different views on the world, but computer science can help so many of the things they were passionate about and can be used in so many ways. Seeing them learn to appreciate the importance and power of knowing how to code was something I was honored to be able to witness and help them discover. They were truly an incredible group of young women and I had so much fun working with them.”