STEAM vs STEM: Blog by a 15 year old Girl Empress

This post was written by a 15 year old STEAM advocate and Girl Empress: Isabela Reyes-Klein

What’s the difference anyway?

Frog dissections, typing, and algebra have slowly faded away and been replaced with the new shiny world of high-tech; 3D printing, graphic deign, and drafting buildings that should be named works of art. This is STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Artistic design, and Math). STEM is the same minus the big juicy A. And boy oh boy, do we want that A.

I’ve been in the STEM program for a full year now, and I’ve discovered quite a few useful facts.

1. There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with a 3D printer.
2. Engineering is a hands-on learning style that is about thinking outside the box.
3. There’s a general misconception about how art ties into all of this.

Art can be incorporated in almost anything, since it’s a way to express your creativity. When looking at a city and thinking of new ways to rejuvenate it and make it fun and full of voice, that’s making art. By putting in parklets, and finding ways to fill alley-ways with street art, and make them shortcuts that put a smile on your face instead of a feeling of uneasiness, that’s also creating art.

STEAM incorporates that, it’s drafting up cool concepts for building your own vertical gardening tower, It’s taking color schemes and cool typography along with graphics to make banners and websites. STEAM is encouraging curiosity and self discovery. It’ already taught me that I might be very interested in becoming an engineer or working in tech. It’s made me want to learn how to code, and how to draft, and use auto cad programs—properly. It’s made me want to learn more. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m sure very many of you STEM & STEM enthusiasts are right now. I’m at the point of no return. Currently, in my STEM program, there are no coding classes, no advanced architectural drafting, and no intense graphic or website design courses.

That needs to change.

I’m now going to start heading up my own entrepreneurial club, along with looking for online classes, and courses offered at the nearby college. I have to find ways to improve the current situation, so I’m blazing a new trail. It’s not going to be easy, but I love learning, especially learning things I’m interested in. I’m going to do what I can, using the engineering principles; identifying the problem, then brainstorming ways to fix it, technology to help along the way, make cool flyers and ads for whatever I end up starting, then good old science and math to figure out which courses I have to take vs. want to take and what the probability of my school and time will allow me to accomplish. And yes I’m going to fail along the way, but hey, that’s how you learn.