Around Manhattan High it is not uncommon to see girls pouring hydrochloric acid onto unknown alkali carbonates, flipping through notes on the physiology of the brain, working with derivatives and integrals or determining a new way to design a lab product. They may be doing this for a class, a club or just for the fun of it. Either way, the young women at MHS are proving just how important it is to get girls interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

For many, STEM subjects have always been at the center of their interests.

“I’ve always been more into science and math than humanities,” junior Rachel Chang said. “It’s just the way that my mind operates, I guess.”

Senior Krista Dix noted a similar sentiment.

“I always thought it was cool because it’s almost like magic,” Dix said. “Scientists were always really easy to look up to because they’re smart and stick to their guns.”

These young scientists have fallen in love with the very nature of the subjects, even though they have heard others regard them as being supposedly less creative.

“It’s like figuring out a puzzle,” Chang said. “A lot of people are going to say that those subjects are uncreative or whatever, but what’s cool is that at some point in the past, scientists and mathematicians were creative enough to disregard common thought and discover the way that the world works.”

Even more amazing to junior Andrea Lu is what is still left to learn.

“I love learning about the world we live in,” Lu said. “It never ceases to amaze me how much we already know about our planet and its organisms and how much there still is to be discovered.”

While gender has far from dampened these girls’ interest, it has affected how others view them.

“Obviously when it comes to things like engineering and computers and hands-on experiments I feel like people might think I’m a little inadequate, because of my gender,” Chang said. “Those generally have ‘more masculine’ associations, but that doesn’t really change the fact that I’m good at it, so it doesn’t bother me really.”

In many cases, they feel that they have higher expectations put on them than their male counterparts.

“I feel like, if anything, people tend to probably expect more which isn’t always good,” Lu said.

Chang added on to this sentiment.

“Even though the gender thing doesn’t bother me now that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue because eventually if I go into engineering I’m going to have to work twice as hard to prove myself,” Chang said.

Though they will collide with adversity, Dix, Chang and Lu look forward to pushing through the wreckage, dusting off the debris and working towards success.

“As much as I would love to be Iron Man. I think I might go into criminal justice or military service,” Dix said. “As far as science related fields, forensic science interests me a lot.”

Chang doesn’t “know her future” yet, but plans to, perhaps, “take over the world” as well as continue to study in the fields she is most interested in.

Lu plans to work in the medical field and hopes other young women will realize how large of an impact they can have on the world.

“I love helping people and I love science so I feel like the medical field allows me to do just that,” Lu said. “I hope that more and more girls will be interested in pursuing something in STEM. In the past, males have been more dominant in these fields, but females are just as capable and can make new discoveries, inventions and other contributions that can influence the world. We are just as intelligent, just as inventive and just as powerful and each and every one of us needs to realize that.”