This week’s Wednesday’s Women in STEM Series features a real life “science princess” and STEM Like a Girl volunteer. Shivali Kadam is the current Miss Oregon and works as a chemical engineer in Portland. Her social impact initiative for Miss America 2.0 is called STEMpowered, inspiring the next generation of female engineers and scientists.
Shivali recently shared a personal experience about her own “failures” at our workshop and we love the message she has for girls and women of all ages!
“I failed my first college calculus course. For someone with the goal of becoming an engineer, it was a hard blow to the ego. As someone who prided herself on academic excellence, it was an even harder blow to my self-image. I could have quit, then, as so many do—but I didn’t. I decided that all I had shown was that there were certain skills I had not yet developed and the strategies I had used to try to develop them weren’t effective. It didn’t mean I was never going to develop them. So, I went back two courses to master the algebraic skills I was lacking, learned how to ask for help the moment I needed it, studied harder than I ever had before… and I aced every subsequent calculus course I had to take for my degree.
So often we give up on our goals at the first signs of failure. So often we doubt our capabilities and believe that we aren’t good enough for our dreams. Instead of taking a different approach to our challenges or asking for help, we internalize failure as a confirmation of our suspected shortcomings.
But the failures that once brought me the most shame are the stories I’ve shared most often during my year as Miss Oregon. My story is not one of perfection; it is one of perseverance. If there’s one lesson I hope kids take with them after speaking with me, especially young girls, it’s that failure isn’t just okay—it’s absolutely inevitable. If you are doing something even remotely challenging, you will experience failure, especially in STEM. It’s up to you to decide whether or not your story ends there. If your goal is important to you, choose it over your ego.”
