As a woman growing up in a man’s world, I’ve been treated like the victim I never was; I understand what it’s like to be the underdog based on how others perceive you. With experiences of people belittling me because of my gender, I will enrich the climate at Virginia Tech because of my value for respect. I’ve encountered pervasive sexism and insolence against my male counterparts upon my last three years in the Governor’s Academy for Engineering Studies at Lloyd C. Bird; and unfortunately this continues on to this day. As an outspoken female, I received heinous backlash consistently from the beginning of my high school career, and it was unnerving to say the least. My abilities and ideas were inevitably disregarded as incompetent, inescapably
