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Education Networking Organization Reflections

The Waterfall Method is No Way to Plan Your Life

I have a new mentee, her name’s AY Daring and you should check her out because she’s awesome. The other day we were talking about what she wants to do with her life, and she has this great stuff that she’s doing with respect to LGBT youth, and I said, “sure, that’s great but will […]

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Programming Reflections women in computer science

The Story of a Girl Who Tripped, Fell, and Ended up in CS

You’ve probably noticed, but our theme for September/October is – “How Did I End Up In CompSci?” – it’s a question that interests me, because for the first three years of university it was something I asked myself a lot. Not in the way, “Wow I love what I do! How did I get here?!” […]

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Extreme Blue Presentation Programming Reflections

My Secret Life as an Introvert

My friend Maggie tells me I’m an introvert. Not because I’m shy, or because large groups make me nervous, but because I don’t get my energy from being around people. I was surprised by this, because I guess I’ve always considered myself to be extroverted and so I asked another close friend and he said […]

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Education Extreme Blue inspiration job hunting Programming Reflections

Priorities and Next Steps

The other day I was having lunch with some other interns, and they were discussing their GPA. It made me question what I was doing, surrounded by 20-22 year-olds who think that a GPA is a measure of achievement and/or a defining characteristic. I mean, to participate in the conversation should I calculate my GPA? […]

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Reflections

Rebuilding

Post-breakup, I took stock of what I was doing and decided I needed a break. I spent days in my pajamas and stopped running about. One of the things I gave myself, was the 5 season Ally McBeal: The Complete Series boxset. I set myself a rule that between each episode I had to do […]

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Reflections

Reinvention

I’ve never had much patience for those girls that reinvent themselves in their boyfriend’s image every relationship. You know, when they’re dating a beer-loving football fan they develop a taste for stella and when they’re dating a cricket lover and wine aficionado it’s all about a nice Beaujolais. Of course if you’re friends with someone […]

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Education Reflections

Finding Balance and Doing Less

Back in March, I had a really terrible week. My paper got rejected and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish this semester, and the following day, my boyfriend and I broke up. It’s not uncommon for a paper to be rejected, however, frustratingly, the comments I got were mostly aspects of […]

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Reflections

Role Models

Several months ago, I met someone who had been reading my blog. We had a chat, but from some things that she said I got the impression that my blog made me seem a bit too much like super-woman. I’m not, as you may have noticed, because since then I’ve tried to temper my writing […]

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job hunting Reflections Thesis

Not (Quite) Having a Meltdown

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I was told my work didn’t make a contribution, went through a rocky patch with my boyfriend, had loads of events for WISE, including one huge, never been done before one, had the whole job search and resume writing process, wrote a paper in just over a week, […]

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Education Organization Reflections Skiing Thesis

Rediscovering Balance

My life has been out of balance for as long as I can clearly remember. And I know, the most successful women embrace that imbalance but my feeling is that mine has been too far out of balance, or perhaps just too imbalanced in the wrong way. Last semester, I was in so much pain […]