“What they said to me was stick to what I was good at.”

“What they said to me was to stick to what I was good at. And in their mind all I was good at was sales and marketing. Not coding, not development. I remember thinking that it’s 2015, why are we acting like women can’t do math? Why are we acting like a person can’t go from one industry to another industry? It’s just so funny to me how I can reflect on feeling so stuck like my only option was to just go back to school and figure it out. Years ago when I dropped out of community college I never thought I’d have the opportunity to work at one of the best tech companies in New York City.”

A cool part of both living in cities for the last seven years and being thirty-one years old is I get to keep meeting new people. When I say new I mean to say different. It allows me to plainly see that gender holds less weight to one’s born traits. Down the street a sixty-something woman runs a burger joint like a commander commanding his fleet. Most women I know are more ambitious and technical than I could ever be. What I’d like to suggest to more traditional minds: You may prefer traditional roles, but you may not decide a person’s role.

A companion essay to the Beautiful Army story: http://beautiful.army/post/144422765551/what-they-said-to-me-was-to-stick-to-what-i-was