Parmita's Blog

A couple summers ago, I made the Girls Who Create summer camp. I started from scratch and created a curriculum, schedule, slides, teaching material, demonstrations, and coded examples. It was one of the most amazing and most rewarding experiences of my entire life. I hoped to do it again and continue the camp, but after moving across the country to college and seeing how quickly my breaks are now filling with internships, research, and extra work, I realized that I wouldn't be able to continue to teach it in person. However, I still want to continue to spread the love of learning and make full use of the resources I created. That is why I have shared the slides, schedules, and planning material on the girlswhocreate  website , in the hopes that others will be able to use these resources to go forth and create their own experience spreading the love of learning and creating. On that page , I have compiled the major resources I created, from the teaching material like sl...

I'm a pretty visual learner, so over the course of my AP Statistics class, I've made a couple of drawings that really helped me solidify certain concepts in my head. I'm pretty proud of them, and hope others will find them useful as well!

An Incredible Experience! Just finished creating, organizing, and teaching the Girls Who Create Camp and it was one of the best experiences of my life! It was a lot of responsibility creating this summer camp on my own and I learned so much. At this camp, I taught girls about 3D Printing and design, but also about life skills as I instilled confidence and speaking skills in them while encouraging them to present in front of the class and their parents. Most importantly, however, I sparked their interest in STEM and showed them some of the amazing things that they can do with science and engineering through specific 3D printed projects, as well as by bringing in guest speakers who actively work in engineering fields. See more about the camp, including what we did every day, some of the incredible projects the girls made, and lots of fun pictures on the website I created just for the camp here: http://girlswhocreate.org/blog

Movie Screening Coming Soon Just finished this poster for a free screening of the movie "Most Likely to Succeed." Can't wait!

Stanford Summer! I just spent the last 3 weeks at Stanford for the Stanford Pre Collegiate Summer Institutes. And I can honestly say it was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. This was the longest I’ve lived away from home without my family. And as an internationally reputed camp, SPCSI allowed me to meet people from all over the globe. Though the academic part of the course was on Artificial Intelligence, I really learned so much more.  For one, I learned how to live independently. I'm really glad I got this experience since it's pretty much the best preparation for college life and the future. I had to learn to not be dependent on my parents. I had to buy myself food, do my laundry, and decide for myself when to get to bed XP. I had to set myself a schedule for how I wanted to get things done. No one forces students to do the reading or homework here. So I took my own initiative at all times to get things done. I'm so proud of my new sense of ...

Everybody learns a little differently   In a past post, I talked about how I tutor a kid named Max. When I gave Max algebra problems to solve, I noticed that he took the right steps--but in the wrong order. For example: After correcting him, and guiding him through some sample problems, I asked him to again try some algebra problems on his own, but he made the same mistake. I realized that now, I shouldn't just explain  how  to solve it the right way, but  why  we do it the way we do. So I spent a couple minutes thinking of the best way to explain why we do certain operations first. I talked about the order of operations, and isolating the variable. Max seemed to understand this, but when given another problem, he froze again. So I tried adding visuals: I turned the problem into an onion! With many different layers: the middle layer was the one closest to the variable, and the outer layers were farther from the variable. To solve the problem, y...

An absolutely amazing experience  I just got the amazing opportunity to teach kids aged 5 to 12 coding at LinkenIN's super fun Inday Event.  Though I was slightly nervous at first, the moment I got up there and started, I felt so awesome! I was so glad that the kids found coding as fun and interesting as I did.  It was so incredible speaking in front of so many people. The kids were all really engaged and came up with smart, thought-provoking questions.  As a bonus, LinkedIn also gave me a whole bunch of cool swag for coming in to teach! I'm so incredibly grateful that I got this wonderful opportunity to share my knowledge and passion with so many other people. I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did!

How teaching helped me learn  For a couple weeks now, I've been tutoring a student, named...well, for the sake of confidentiality, let's call him "Max." Max has been having trouble with algebra for a while and his dad thought it might be helpful to have me help him so he's prepared for school next year. A lot of times, when I asked if he understood a concept, he said yes, but in reality, he didn't really get it at all. I told him that it was totally fine if he didn't understand a concept right away. It would be better to tell the truth and have me re-explain it than to lie and then struggle with the topic in the future. However, he kept lying and saying he understood things when he actually didn't. I had to change my strategy and start assuming that when he said that he understood something, he really didn't. I was getting kind of irritated and annoyed when I realized... I do this too!!!!! I was being such a hypocrite, when in fact, I often...