smh54: Just the Beginning

After a long morning of travel, arriving to Baltimore was quite a relief. I was so excited to finally be at the conference. The first session of the conference I attended was “How to Optimize your Job Search.” At first I was a little skeptical about attending this session considering I am only a sophomore, but it proved to teach me a great deal more than what I expected. The women in the panel discussed everything from networking to what they look for in an interview. I made sure to take plenty of notes during this session and used all of the tips they gave for the remainder of the conference. When I went to the career fair later in the week I felt completely prepared and continued to look back on my notes from the session to make sure I appeared confident and prepared.

I also attended the “Latinas in Computing Reception” in the evening. This was a great networking experience for me.  I met latina women that worked for MasterCard, Microsoft and a woman looking for latina women to fill summer internship positions in Silicon Valley! I met other students from all over the country and stayed connected with them throughout the remainder of the conference. The women that organized the WURG (Women of Underrepresented Groups) track really put a great deal of effort into making us feel comfortable and providing us with information on not only problems faced by women, but women of color as well. These sessions, dinners and lunches were some of my favorites at the conference.

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