The new extracurricular club Girls Who Code took a field trip to the headquarters of Google on Feb. 26 to better their knowledge and interest in the computer science field.

Prior to the field trip, members of the club had spent the first-semester creating projects on platforms like Scratch and advancing their knowledge of digital coding. 

Because the club had such a successful first semester—getting a substantial amount of people to join, producing a wide variety of creative and intuitive projects, and receiving positive feedback from members—the club’s student advisors, Alyssa Serebrenik and Sarina Trivedi felt that it was time for the club to start “experiencing” coding. 

“We wanted to go on a field trip to further benefit the experience of all of our club members and hopefully increase their knowledge and liking of coding,” said Trivedi. “And so we figured that we should go to a big company that’s very present in the coding world and we immediately thought of Google.”

Overall, the girls had a “very educational day,” according to Trivedi. Google brought in many guest speakers, both young and old members of the company, who answered students’ questions as well as talked about their own experiences. The students learned about mechanical engineering, as well as coding and the other necessary skill sets needed to work at Google.

“I thought it was very interesting. They were all very excited to come to talk to us. And it was really cool to see how somebody who was very similar to us or hasn’t even had the background that we have can still make it into coding,” Trivedi said. 

Along with meeting computer scientists and engineers at Google, the club also visited the local Google Learning Center. There, the club got a tour and saw the basic principles behind the technology and history that made Google. They also heard from various Google employees who told the girls about ‘a day in the life of a Google employee.’ Finally, they got access to Google’s exclusive cafeteria.

After spending nearly a day in one of the world’s most progressive coding companies, many members of the club felt motivated and inspired to create a more lucid viewpoint for their impending careers in computer science. 

“I learned that anyone can accomplish something like coding, which is the whole point of Girls Who Code is to encourage women to join the STEM field,” Trivedi said. “It really showed that anyone can accomplish anything and you shouldn’t be restricted to the mindset that society has put upon the female.”