Danh ngôn của Reshma Saujani (Sứ mệnh: 4)

Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars, and then just jump off headfirst.
Coding, it's an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place, with sometimes just a semicolon making the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and then it falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries until that magical moment when what you're trying to build comes to life.
I'm the daughter of refugees. The immigrant mentality is to work hard, be brave, and never give up in your pursuit of achieving the American dream.
As I've traveled the country, we visit tech incubators all the time where women are going into their second or third act in their career and learning how to be software programmers, or how to work at startup companies, and learning a completely different skill set. I think it's never too late.
You still hear this perception that boys are good at math and girls are not, and it's not cool and it's not interesting. And I think we have to shift the culture. It's so deeply entrenched in who we are.
I was full of pride when President Obama talked about coding in his last State of the Union address. I was proud when Chicago recently made computer science mandatory as a requirement for graduation. To see this elevate to the level of a bigger conversation is progress.
For so long, women have been waiting to get recognized. The world doesn't work that way. We need to teach girls that it's OK to ask for what you want when it comes to your salary or whatever it is you want to enhance your career. No one is going to notice you no matter how amazing you are.
I never take for granted how lucky I am to be an American and what a privilege it is to spend each day at a nonprofit dedicated to helping the next generation of girls achieve their dreams. My journey, as the daughter of refugees, shows what refugees and the children of refugees can create for all Americans.
Coding - everyone thinks it's a superpower. And so when you feel like, 'I've learned how to code,' and you say to your mom or the girl sitting next to you, 'I know how that app is built, I know the logic behind how that was created' - that's powerful.
I'm glad I didn't know how much patience entrepreneurship required. It took some time to turn that into a strength of mine, so that would've presented an obstacle when I was younger.