Path of Discovery

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience A bit personal, a bit all over. Sharing pieces of my uncomfortable journey in the working world. Illusions of Society Why is there a glass ceiling if a woman must pay as much as a man for things? I make 20% less to my male equivalent, but life expenses are the same (if not more if you include the “pink” tax) as what the man would pay. In 2023, that number was precisely 21.8 percent according to this source. I was once told to not get fat because I'm “not married yet”. At one of my first jobs, the person that interviewed me told me he thought I was going to be Mexican. Since I look white, you would never guess I was half Mexican. At a place where I had training, a peer asked me: “Why would anyone want to hire you? You don’t even have a computer science degree.” I looked at the person, knowing that I had built a computer, repaired many others, and he did not. Everything I knew to that point was largely self-taught.