CodeMonkey Women of STEM || 2021 Hour of Code Event

we want to thank everyone for joining us today please tell us where you're joining us from and we are looking forward to beginning this event and just about three minutes all right everyone we're going to give everyone just a few more minutes to shuffle in here we know it's a really early morning for everyone so we'll go ahead and get started in just a few more minutes just to give everyone some time and we thank those of you that have already joined us because we know it's an early morning we are giving everyone just a few more minutes to shuffle in here and then please know that the recording will be available for everyone to view after today's event so we thank you so much for joining us and if you share with us in the chat box what grade levels you're working with that will also help us with some questions if you also have any questions for our panel please go ahead and post those in the q a box we're excited to have a q a feature at the end so go ahead and put those questions in there now okay those of you that are just joining us go ahead and put in the chat box where you're joining us from we are going to go ahead and take questions from you at the end so um i apologize for stopping right there we are going to go ahead and get started with today's event so thank you all so much for joining us for the 2021 hour of code webinar series this is our favorite event of the year so we're really excited that you're taking the time to join us with your students and to share in our favorite week of the year alrighty so if you have any questions go ahead and pop those in the q and a box so this is the women in stem also known as the women of code monkey and the women in cs so we're excited to share a little bit about our women led team and share those questions with you all be sure to um oh sorry so this is um like i mentioned our favorite event of the year this is our seventh year being part of the hour of code slash cs ed week and the code monkey team does want to take time to thank you to all teachers and students who are joining us for today's webinar and who will watch this after we know that there are many choices and we thank you for spending your time with us and if you are catching this at a later date we also want to thank you and and if you have any of those questions feel free to reach out to our team at any time we are so excited to share this year's hour of code with you please do remember to follow us on all of our social channels at codemonkeystu you'll be able to stay up to date with everything from the latest in code monkey to edtech news and content so be sure to follow along with that as well to begin our event we always like to oh and also during today's webinar you can use the hashtag as you can see here in the bottom of all the slides cmhoc2021 you can tweet at us during any time during the event as well and we'll go ahead and get to those questions in addition to that if you have any questions please go ahead and put those in the q a box for our panel or as those questions come up we do want to honor your students questions and bring those to our team as well and if we do not get to any q a questions or anything like that we will make sure to follow up with you after today's event so if you're ready let's go ahead and write code catch bananas and save the world we always like to first start off by introducing our team and who's joining us today and so my name is lena salle i'm the professional development and a sales manager here at code monkey i help organize these types of events previous to that i was a teacher and i a fun fact about me is i have seven siblings that's a lot of siblings all right so we also have today joining us is our panelist and so we start with yoaf and joab is our full stack developer and you'll learn a little bit about what a full stack developer is and what they do and so we're thankful that he's joining us um he has been with codemonkey for three years and prior to that he did a lot of game development before joining code monkey and a fun fact about him is that he loves to play the drums we also have uh brett espelson he is our vp of us sales um and he has been with code monkey for a little over two years almost three years now and a fun fact about him is that he is really really tall and loves to play basketball we also have maya she is our customer success manager and maya is joining us from israel as well as our piano as most of our panels besides myself and brett and maya is really a fun fact about her is she's new to the code monkey team and we're really excited to have her and a fun fact about her is that she loves art and is really um very passionate about art in the international culture okay so why do we do a panel on the women in stem well did you know that only 29 of women comprise the stem workforce and 52 of those are college educated women 19 of that of women are in board positions that means that they are the decision makers at the top of the company and that was that number is up from previous year so we have been seeing more women making concentrated efforts and becoming higher ups in the stem world so that's really exciting but still a relatively low number is that only three percent of women in the stem fields are ceos that means that they are the chief executive officers that basically means that they run those companies so we really wanted to focus on the women in code monkey and and just to be able to meet the team and kind of learn a little bit more about them so our code monkey team is really majority led by women and so i'm so excited to get for each of you guys to meet them so now let's meet our superstars of today's event and that is our team of the code monkey women in stem so i'm going to go ahead and let them introduce themselves to you hi my name is nat i've been working at cold monkey for five and a half years now i am married and i have four boys from the ages 18 to nine fun fact about myself is that i went to over 50 concerts of the same famous israeli singer in the past 25 years hi can you hear me we can hear you okay hi i'm uh sanda and i've been working at a code monkey as a developer for three years a little more over three years and um i live in tel aviv and i am an animal activist um i uh feed uh over 50 stray cats and i um also attempt to save other kinds of animals last weekend it was a bat and this weekend it was a mouse that's a lot of animals [Laughter] it's great to see your work outside of just code monkey hi my name is adi and i'm working in code monkey for about three years now um a fun fact about me is that i love rubik's cubes and that i have about 15 different ones at my work desk true and he's even led some events for us to teach us how to do rubik's cubes so if you need expert advice she's your go-to person all right so we're going to go ahead and what will we exactly cover today today we're going to explore um through a live panel discussion what it's like to be a woman in stem and we're going to take live q a questions from you the audience and some questions that have already been pre-registered so um go ahead if you do have any questions for our panelists please go ahead and throw those in the q a box as we want to hear from you alright so let's get ready to kick today's off today's event off so we're going to start off with our first question if each of these ladies mentioned what their roles were or you saw on the slide what each of their roles were we're going to dive in to dive a bit deeper into exactly what does that mean so you guys all have a little of insight into each of their roles so we're going to start off with our first question here what and this is for sanda what is a full stack developer and what does a full stack developer do okay basically a full stack developer is a developer that works on both the back end as well as the front end of the program at code monkey for example our work is divided into features so almost every feature can be divided into a back-end part and a front-end part the back end is uh refers to usually the server side code which includes connections to the database calculations and system-wide logic while the front-end um refers to the the user interface and design so in the past there are often back-end developers and front-end developers that were different not the same person they were different people with different skills and in more recent years it's more and more common for one person to do both and then be able to be completely responsible for a feature from start to finish so that's a full stock developer that's great i think that's good insight for those of you who didn't know that there's front sides and back sides um and then there's also people who make the pages extra beautiful for you too as well so lots of lots of different roles there um so our next question is for adi what is a technical lead at code monkey and what exactly does a technical lead do so i'm a full stack developer just like a son i mentioned before and i have additional responsibilities i plan weekly tasks for the team and i'm always thinking about how we can improve our the work and our work environment and they're pushing towards a better program and happy developers great so it's more of a managerial role as well in addition to coding right yeah okay our next question is for levnat so libnaught is our content developer so let's not what exactly is a content developer and what do you what does a content developer do okay so a content developer is it's like the the name uh it's someone that creates the content uh in call monkey i'm developing challenges and games um the ones that you i hope uh enjoy to play when we create a new game for example or when we add new challenges i sit with my manager and we do a little bit of brainstorming to decide what we want to teach for example now we are going to expand code monkey junior um the challenges there so we met and we decided that we want to add a new chapter on conditional loops then we decide what the characters will be in the game what the object what new object will be in the game and after we have um that i go and i plan what each what we will do in each challenge what it will look like um i and then after i have uh planned the the challenges themselves i go and they create them and of course play them like you do great so if you ever have any questions she's your person that we usually ask first because she's the one who created most of the monkey courses which is really cool um okay so our next question is for all of you so we would love to hear your backstory on how each of you actually got into the world of computer science um so we'll go ahead and put that off with each one of you answering the questions um okay i'll start um growing up which was a long time ago um i didn't get into i didn't have any um experience in computers um it didn't really interest me also in my high school they didn't have any courses for computer science and then when i had to decide what to study in the university i consulted with my dad who was a programmer and he told me that i would be good at computer science and since i trusted his instinct i uh i went and studied computer science at the beginning it took it i mean at first it took me a while to get into it and to understand it i even failed my first course in computer science in university but then um after i got the hang of it i really enjoyed it and very glad that i made that decision i think it's so great that you shared that the first time that you did it was really challenging and that you failed because there's many times that even when you're learning even we're playing the code monkey course itself sometimes i fail at the challenges too so it's nice to hear that you had some failure but just kept going with it okay who's next up adi yes yes so my story is that in high school we had to choose study majors and my dad tried to push me to to take computers and physics and i was too afraid because it was considered for boys and only nerds and boys and i also worried that i won't be good at it so i chose another major and after high school i did the military service and i sent to be an i.t person and for that i had to take computer network management course there i learned learned about computers and i became close to them i really liked them and i discovered that i was good at it and it was fun for me i didn't listen to my dad and i'm upset about it i should have yeah but you you got there anyway right your journey might have been a little bit different but sounds like he had the right thing in mind for you um just something i like to share with our audience is because our company is based in israel all of our ladies are actually joining us from our israeli office in israel after you finish high school most everyone correct me if i'm wrong you guys i will do military service and the military actually does some really extensive testing and they try to fit you into roles that basically best fit you so sometimes there's a lot of personality tests there's a lot of just testing that they do in general to kind of fit fit your what they think will fit you best is that right okay all right sanda um how did you oh sorry um yeah no problem i i actually didn't do military service um but uh i started um from an early age uh because of my um my mother who was a professor of mathematics so at an early very young age she already she really encouraged me to study to be involved in math and science activities we went to the science museum a lot and she would always give me math problems to do which i didn't really like but it helped me later because it was easier for me because i had someone to ask always um i also remember that she bought me a book about women in mathematics and i think that was also really inspiring as a young girl so i ended up liking math because um i i guess i wanted to please her but i also had the confidence because she gave me confidence um but it was only later that i got into computer science because it was um it was just more practical because there was there's a lot more applications and and i thought that it would be that i would be good at it because of my math background but um later like i realized that computers just like um is much more interesting to me and much more empowering and i'm i'm really glad that i went to study computer science so that's great that you had a mom that also empowered you so it sounds like all three of you actually had um all of your parents were very big supporters of getting you into computer science or at least kind of pushing you into those stem fields um okay so now we're going to ask another question is what program languages do you use and do you have a favorite programming language um so i'll start i use the same languages as the kids who plays uh cold monkey use uh when i create or solve challenges so those languages are coffeescript python and also coding with blocks um i i like um i like the blocks uh coding a lot especially when you play it on a tablet it's really fun to drag it and it's very um easy to use i think i agree i love code monkey jr yeah at codemonkey we use uh coffeescript javascript and ruby uh mostly um uh i really like javascript just because it's really uh easy to run on any computer and all you need is a browser you know like a terminal of a browser so it's really easy to run anywhere um and like most of the other languages i feel like are at least the ones that i've used are fairly simple like there's different syntax but um that they're the the concepts are the same i think that's important because each one of you mentioned that you use different languages but i'm sure you've throughout your careers have used other languages as well but it sounds like if you know the concepts of computer science then you can use any language okay that's great i think that's a good thing for for those kiddos to take away that you may you may start with a different language but that doesn't mean that that's going to be the language that you work in when you first start your job or you might also have like a few other languages each one of these ladies mentioned that they have many different languages they use every single day so i think that's if you know the concepts then just know that you can have more adversity to the languages even when looking for a job like it's still like people ask for certain languages like experience in certain languages and i feel like it's not that relevant for the most part you know um you know it's experience that you can learn within a few weeks i think for the most part like um so i don't know i think that's great though i think that's good feedback because you see a lot of people who ask those types of questions when they are interviewing or trying to apply for jobs like oh i see that it has this language but i may not know that um i may not know that language is it should i still apply and i think what you're saying is that with you know one language very well and then you can probably apply most of the things to other languages like of course there are there there are languages that are much different but most of the languages that are used in programming uh web are fairly you know similar great though i think that's really good feedback okay so our next question is we know that math and coding have close ties to each other we always hear math and coding they go so well together so how do you feel that this brought you to being a programmer so i'll answer that um so in mathematics there are like just a single answer either it's right or it's wrong you need to get to a single result and so for me it's give me a lot of certainty like i know if i'm right i know and so this is something i find connected in programming i need to reach some result i know if the program is working or not so that's the connection for me yeah sounds like a lot of problem solving skills kind of go together and that those math problem solving work itself with the regular coding that you use every single day okay so code monkey has a pretty equal ratio of men to women just in the whole company in general um obviously our women development team is majority women so it's really one of my favorite things about working at the company and has that been an experience that you've experienced that same thing of more women to men or equal ratios and other workplaces that you've worked at uh from for me like uh it is a very different experience um working at code monkey um the other places i worked at were like at most like 25 like women especially in the development like um and i think it just adds like for me it's a lot more comfortable i think there's like a greater sense of camaraderie and like helping each other out i don't know if it's because there are more women or an equal amount of women in the company but i think it helps like um i wish more places were like that definitely i think i think it's um important you know to have women around you also to support you but i think we've discussed this offline prior to you know having our event today um just about how kobuki has also supported them which we'll dive a little bit deeper here in a bit about also being mothers in the workplace and i think that as women sometimes that could be a scary thing and sometimes can push women back from actually moving into more of those managerial roles because being a mom um sometimes or has often been stereotyped that we have to stay home or that we have to kind of give up our roles in the professional world to be mothers so i know that sanda and lyvnat are both moms um so i guess we can kind of talk about that a bit how has that experience been for both of you being a woman in stem and then also being moms um so that actually goes to the next question um well and i worked in when i worked in my previous company we worked with offices in the us and because of the time difference i had to have a lot of meeting took place in the afternoon and evening of israel time um so it made me stay at work late and miss being with my kids at home for dinner and other times i would have to stay at work to to join those meetings um i would go home to be with my kids and then i would miss on um meetings at work so um it made me feel that i wasn't 100 at home and also i wasn't 100 at work and um i always felt guilty about something so um i felt that that was harsh because i don't know if um male i mean if men feel the same as we do i don't know i think that it's probably has been important to find a company that also supports that you are a mom and you know and you're working too so that you can kind of have those experiences with your children too um sanda do you have any additional points to to that one yes sorry um yeah um i'm still getting used to the mom thing so i think feel like i'm still working on it um both being a mom and being a programmer and um yeah sometimes i feel like i'm not good at either or okay at both but yeah code monkey is supportive place and very understanding and it helps that are there are other people in my position you know um definitely helps um in general i feel like um like at interviews i think i felt a lot of um sort of like uh when there are several men interviewing me and like a lot of the you know sometimes you feel like they're very competitive and just kind of showing off uh to one another it's like i felt that way at interviews um it's definitely not fun it's one of the less fun activities um and finding a job as a programmer the interviews are very tough um at least here i don't know um i bet same in the states um but um also at places i've worked even after getting into the in you know going through the interview process and getting accepted at a place and then being really unhappy because just feeling that the culture is a total mismatch it's just like a lot of men that are like really competitive and want to make lots of money and like you've gone through this whole extensive process and you feel like you just want to get out of there so and you know i've left places like that and i left one place after a few months only working even though i felt really guilty you know but it was really smart that i left because then i started working at code monkey after a while and um i think it's just like um you just have to find a right the right fit like there are so many places and like not to just get stuck in some place that doesn't make you feel good so i think that's an important i think thing to identify is that sometimes we are feeling like we have to compete so so much to prove ourselves um and then you just mentioned like you had a lot of guilt of walking away from where you were but i think that it's kind of like when you're learning anything new even the workplace is the same sort of situation you have to try until you find something that's right um and i think that it it's okay as being a woman i know sometimes we think oh we work so hard to get here um and earn the respect but if it if it doesn't feel like the respect is mutual once you're in the door it's important to know that there are other places that you can go and it doesn't make you a bad person and it doesn't make you any less of a any less of a woman or any less of you know a person contributing to the work field but just knowing that you can stand up for you is an important fact too so i think that's i think that's really good feedback to share with students did you say something sentenced are you remoted no i totally agree oh okay um i could read your words bye i wasn't sure if that's what you meant um and then adi i guess we we mentioned this question at the beginning here is being a woman in a mostly dominated field have you experienced any hardships um just being in the field itself i know we mentioned it with lyvnot and sanda but i'd love to hear from you any hardships that you've experienced yeah so for me code monkey is my first full-time job in this field and i feel very lucky and sanda was the first one to interview me here so it was really nice and so now until now i haven't experienced any hardships as a woman and i think that that's i think that that's great because we kind of have um a bit of like generational all of us are you know different ages and so we've kind of experienced different things coming into the workplace and i think as each year progresses companies are becoming more inviting and more welcoming to women actually having these these different you know roles and things like that so i think i think the fact that you haven't really experienced that i think also speaks to where we are today and i think it's it's really great to see that you're also able to you know you are a lead of code monkey and the technical team and i think that's really cool to just you know kind of hear everyone's experiences and how things have changed does anyone have any follow-up to that okay um okay so when you shared i think this is a good question for everyone to kind of know um when you share with your family and friends that you're going to become a computer scientist did you face any opposition i know each one of you spoke about your past experiences but was there any any opposition that you got from anyone when you did decide and tell everyone that you were going to become a computer scientist for me at first when i chose to go to study computer engineering my parents were very supportive my brothers that were both of them already engineers they were teased being beat they they said that i wasn't smart enough and some of my friends laughed at me for being a robot and some thought it will be hard for me to compete on job with the other mans that it was a meant for a world for men yeah i didn't listen to them good i think that's good feedback yeah dee doesn't really listen to anybody it's good that's the best advice best advice it is good advice for sure um asando what about you i know you had a little bit different experience um yeah you know also like we were we all had support from our from our uh parents that's how we got into it so yeah so my mom's really happy like um she was really um she thought it was really important for me to have like a a strong um uh you know like base sort of uh financial base also um and i think um i it was just for me it was like a practical decision that i made later in life and um [Music] only later i i realized it was also something that could make me also happy like but i think i was just like confident with my decision for for like a practical decision that's it and i think we and we talked about this a bit offline but online too is that um sanda actually her undergrad because her mom is a mathematician and she actually studied so sonda grew up in the united states now she now lives in israel so that's why she didn't have to do the military service there um but she had a different experience where she started out being her undergrad is in math and then she decided to move into computer science so i thought about teaching math and then i quickly realized it was like way too stressful for me um and then i i sort of like took some time off and and tried to figure out what would fit me better you know and my undergraduate like was at a liberal arts school so like what i studied like the math i studied in undergrad is like one semester of what i studied in computer science like it was crazy um how much how intense it was studying computers but like um it was worth it like [Music] um yeah i think what what you mentioned too is that that wasn't you didn't originally think about i mean you had some inkling about being in computers and things like that but that it's never too late to switch a career or find a new passion and i think that um taking you know you took some being a doctor or something where you have to study a friend do like a residency in like 10 years like with computers if you study intensively you can really get somewhere in you know a few years and like there are so many applications like it's crazy yeah i agree i agree with that and i think and i think that's what i think is so unique about computer science is that there are things like we mentioned coding boot camps and like those different things um that you can take and you also mentioned being financially stable and that was an important thing that your mom and you know everybody wants us to be financially stable but computer science and a career in computer science or stem typically leads to a higher salary so allowing us as women to be able to support ourselves independently um oh sorry bud which is very important it is very important does anyone have any finishing thoughts on that one okay and we're gonna we're getting some questions here too so we'll get to that here in just a few minutes some really great things are coming in here um and then we briefly mentioned this i think a little bit there but just wanted to see if anyone had any finishing points here is do you feel that code monkey has supported you as a woman in stem i would say definitely yes [Music] codmin is a very flexible work environment as long as the work gets done you can do it from home you can do it at the time that um best fit you i was able to work from home and accommodate my hours so that i can also be a mom and um and walk so definitely yes yes also i agree uh it's a very i think uh very flexible place and uh there's really a feeling um of um you know listening and thinking about each other's needs not just like pretend like like really so um that's very important and nice okay what about you i agree i don't feel that we're treated any differently for being a woman just everybody here and the environment is really flexible and understanding and as long as the work is done well so we're supported to work in the environment and that it's most comfortable for us which i think is which i think is important um before we get to this last question i just want to ask you guys how many of you do know women that haven't had exactly the same experience being a woman supported in stem do you guys know anyone none of you guys everyone feels like you guys know women that have been pretty supported around you that's pretty much that's great though i think that's an it's rare but that's important i think also it could also be i wonder if it's like a culture or anything oh i know women in stem yeah i think like i don't know i was just like um um yeah it's a difficult question um we can think on it we could touch back on it later um and then i will mention just for i know we talked about this would your family going into um computer science did you have any opposition i just also wanted to answer myself because i'm also in the stem field with who all as well for me i had a lot of people who discouraged me from going into computer science i did physics and i did advanced math courses but when i finally went to it they said oh you wouldn't be good at it and so it took me until i was teaching i had a whole another career in head of it and i was actually introduced during the hour of code to computer science i took a workshop for code.org and so that's actually how i found computer science and started having a love and started attending all these workshops and then started just kind of self-teaching myself and not as great of a coder as these ladies but i have learned quite a bit through the process so i think it's important to know that you just keep going and and it's okay if not everyone agrees with your pathway but you'll find your people when you do so i think that's important too okay so this is a question that we mentioned and the purpose of really why we're doing this is why do you feel it's important to support other women who are currently in stem or wanting to get into the field itself so having more women in stem careers will help narrow down the journey gender pay gap and then enhance women economic security we said it's really important also it ensures the diversity and a talented workforce and uh prevents biases in this fields when it comes to the products and the services that they produce i think it's very important great i think that's a very important um aspect into it and the gender pick up those are all really you know really real things that we've been able to see starting to make movements in the last few years but still needing a little bit more i think traction than there is now um okay so our last like really question before we take our q a from the audience is what inspirational message would you give to young girls or to women to inspire them to pursue stem and whatever that looks like for them i would say that um you can do anything you want and don't be afraid to start to to try new things and you might find that you like them you might find that you don't which is also okay but don't be afraid yeah that's exactly what i want to say for me like i was forced to study computers and that's how i got to know that i'm good at it and that i like it so if you are forced to do something or to learn something that you think you're not good at it just think about it in a positive way you might find that you like it you might not but just try yeah and i think that also like the many applications like there's so much power and in computers and programming and it's like really sometimes in like movies or tv it looks like this really narrow type of person that goes into these fields of like this computer nerd that like sits on like types like really fast and i think that it's like it's really doesn't have to be that way and it's not that way and like um there are so many uh applications um and so much power really and and i feel like yes you know women should be in those in those power positions and and give some more perspective to the world like um i think it will make it the world a better place like really so definitely and i think each one of you has you know kind of said just try i think that's the important thing with the hour of code and really anything that you do just try and you probably it sounds like every single one of them at the very beginning had some hardship with learning how to even do computer science because it is very it is challenging um and there's just even you know writing code and even really well you know all of you will know and anyone who works in other companies will say that you know you have these long sprints and you're doing your code and everything seems like it's great and then bam there's one little syntax error that's hidden somewhere and it takes you hours and days to find where it is so um i think just trying is important anything we do in life just try you may not like it you know let's say it's you know give it a no thank you taste um okay so now we're gonna switch gears and we are going to take questions from the audience so i do just want to thank these ladies for taking these questions and giving their time to us today um and all of you that are spending your time with us too so we did have this question from miss thomas she is in arkansas arkansas and she teaches grades six through eight and so she had this question for you all how can i encourage young women to become part of stem programs whether in school or even out of school yeah i think the first step is to ask young women what interests them and what will encourage them to to to learn stem then try to think how you combine it with program because you can you can combine everything this program like sanders said there are so many applications but the first step is to ask young women that's such great advice i think like because i wouldn't think about it but it's true like uh so i so often like i think that computers aren't taught that way that it's like taught in a certain way and then like really if you just ask what interests the kids like and then show them how it can fit like you can make it a little bit more relevant without do you have any on that um no i'll go with my friends here okay i also think that when you have how to encourage them is i think to also expose them a bit in your classroom so i think taking those traditional regular content areas like science or language arts pairs really really nicely with doing computer science or any of those types of things is that actually everything kind of aligns all together so i think exposing them a bit in the classroom is a really good way to encourage them to try things outside of it sometimes it's lower risk for them to do it in the classroom and then you're like oh you just did all these stem things and then it'll kind of encourage them to do it outside of the classroom one thing that i do caution is making things exclusively like all women like when i've done i've seen coding clubs beginning is they'll take like barbie dolls or something and all the coding needs to be surrounding just strictly women you know dolls or things things like that you we like to do legos too so just giving us more general neutral exposure is also important it doesn't have to be all pink it doesn't have to be all this it can be exposure for everyone thought of anything really yeah like oh we have to do and i've seen it in actually a lot of schools throughout the years just in the exposure is that everything has to be all strictly you know super girly and i think that um there's while it's interesting at the beginning to kind of encourage them to do that i think that there's a danger in sticking only in that zone um so i think just exposing them as much as you can so yeah that's what i have there um before we um we also have some other questions these were pre questions here um i just have a couple of comments from people who have been joining us from around the world we have somebody in bhutan and somebody and a few people in singapore that have been joining us um and one person just shared with us they said it's so inspiring to hear each of your stories they're running coding classes in singapore this person um and so it's just great to hear um your own story so i just wanted to share that with you guys as well um and then we had a question here um at what age did you actually really start coding so i think each one of you could probably answer this so i was 22 when i went to university or maybe 21 between those ages okay yeah i think i started studying computer science at age 23 or 24 but like the whole it was very little programming like mostly it was very theoretical and um i only started really programming at my first job that was like at 27 or something like that like i didn't know at all like from the university like what i studied and then totally different [Laughter] but um i think that's great feedback too i think a lot of times when in higher ed we walk away with only knowing limited skill set but where you actually do most of your learning is on the job yeah what about you a d i was 23 when i started university i think it's great that you all also started pretty young for me when i first learned i think i was oh maybe probably around the same age probably like 20 25 26 so i guess we all started young so that's good but um i've recently been doing lots of trainings with other teachers and things like that and i had a woman who was in one of the trainings she was almost 80 years old and she was just beginning to do block based coding so it's never too late and she was so jazzed when she started figuring it out so i think that if an older person who's well seasoned in life and has lots of you know experiences can start coding then and you can too okay so another question um for you all was um hold on one second i lost my place here um okay so if you could go back and tell your younger you one thing about today what is something that you would tell them i'll give you time to process because that's a tough tough question about myself now yeah you would tell yeah tell about like where you are now like if you could tell your give your younger self advice about our world today what would you say i think i will tell her to take this study major to take computers in high school then i will tell her that she needs to be really proud of her herself she really need to believe in herself and and don't listen to people that don't don't support her that's great really good feedback oh i love that be brave that's a good one too i would say for me i think i would take exactly what these advice is um to just go with my good instinct because i was always like tinkering with things i was like taking things apart and putting them back together when i was like young and that wasn't seen as like the girly thing to do but i think if i would have just followed that pathway i probably would be sitting in your seats today yeah i think i would tell myself also like to try as many new things as possible i think i was always very uh kind of wary and timid and um i think now i'm starting to realize how many more interests i have and you know like uh and that uh right to be brave i think that's a great great thing um to just try new things yeah great perspective um i would say that um balance is very important so you have to have um to do what you want to do on like leave time for yourself to do things that make you happy as a person and then have enough time to um to do your job and then have enough time with the family so just find balances in life go ahead to see the details [Laughter] you know there's so there's so much going on in the world you know like thinking about the animal part like um there's so many there's so much we can do i think just uh just by seeing the details that's it you know i i agree with that um since you guys are all part of the code monkey team um since we kicked off an avatar competition where students get to create their own avatars we're having a competition where they draw them and then we're going to turn them into code monkey avatars do you guys have a favorite code monkey avatar that you guys use i love the penguin i wanted to say that too it's also my favorite too i also like the flamingo from the banana table flamingo is good too what's your sanda the cat obviously smooth and orange yes very cute well i want to thank all of you guys so much again for taking time and kicking off your hour of code event with us we are so happy to have these ladies join us um they were a bit nervous before they joined us but i think they did an amazing amazing job and we're so lucky that we had them take time out of their day to share with you your stories and hopefully creating some inspiration for your own students and knowing that you can really do anything that you put your mind to and just try i think that's the the key from today just try so we want to thank you guys again for spending your time with us please remember to like share subscribe and also make sure that you check out all of the hour of code courses that we have and just give them a try all right until next time we'll see you guys later thank you guys so much bye everybody bye