Congratulations! Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own, and you know the road.
And YOU are the girl who’ll decide what to code.
You started from Scratch, drawing circles and squares,
Then built paddleball games and MP3 players.
You picked up the basics of variables and loops,
And made lots of new friends as you programmed in groups.
You moved on to Python, a new language, hooray!
And taught your robots to dance like Beyoncé.
With computer vision, you wrote your own program
To filter your pictures — a personal Instagram!
You used objects and methods, constructors and classes,
To build fish tanks and cities in Processing JS.
You made your own homepage as you learned web development
Using JavaScript, CSS, and the HTML-ephant.
You built databases and used APIs
In a text editor that was simply Sublime.
With data structures like dictionaries and arrays,
You coded tic-tac-toe and conquered 2048.
You researched algorithms for searching and sorting
And implemented hashes for password protecting.
Every week had a field trip and a whole host of speakers,
Engineers and executives — inspiring leaders.
And then it was Hack Week and you pitched your ideas.
And planned and coded, and now you’re here!
Ready for anything in the whole world,
Ready because you’re that kind of a girl!
On and on you will code, (but you’ll pseudocode before)
and face up to your problems no matter what’s in store.
You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up with many strange bugs as you go.
So be sure when you code, to read the documentation,
And check every parenthesis and semicolon.
Just never forget to mind your syntax
And remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.
And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
GIRL, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
So… be your name Margot, Nisha, Jourdann or Lucie,
or Sarah, Shaneil, Fion or Josie,
Angelica, Mayra, Ophelia too,
Danna or Jessica or Michelle Tu
Sakina or Emma or Leslie as well
Naledi or Rara or other Michelle
You’re off the Great Places! Today is your day!
The future is waiting. So… get on your way!
Credit to Dr. Seuss and the AT&T GWC team