Hello friends, I have a great question that I am going to try and answer from my perspective and with everything I've learned so far.
How do we persist in STEM despite the obstacles and challenges?
Despite the fact that I had almost no role models in STEM growing up, I let my curiosity guide me, and honestly it hasn't failed me yet. I think it is also important to let go of the indoctrination of everything needs to be perfect and failures are to be avoided at all cost. Let's be realistic, nothing is perfect! you can exist in STEM and not be perfect, really you can exist period and not be perfect, because no one and nothing is perfect. I actually find peace and beauty in that, and I hope you will too. We can not truly learn without failures! It is actually a natural progression of learning. Some could argue that we learn better from seeing the failures, the 'what not to do'. If you are always afraid to fail you will never grow outside of your existing knowledge that was build on failures you experienced as a young person, before the world told you you had to be perfect and failure was now something to avoid at all cost. Go grow, be yourself and make mistakes and learn form those failures like nature intended! In the famous words of one of my favorite teachers and STEM role models - Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!
https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Ms._Valerie_Frizzle?file=Mrs._Frizzle.png
