Telling our stories – Stine Fjeldsrud Karlsen
Each year we meet incredible women at womENcourage™ celebrations. We ask womENcourage participants to tell their stories in blog posts. We continue 2024 with 
Stine Fjeldsrud Karlsen, who is currently finishing her master’s program in Computer Science. She attended womENcourage 2023 in Trondheim and initialy pursued fashion and realized what she liked the most about her job was working with the IT systems.
My name is Stine, and I am a 27-year-old woman in my 2nd year of my 5-year master’s program in Computer Science.
When I was 18, all I wanted to do was work with fashion, styling and makeup. At high school I didn’t take any science subjects and my math grade was nothing to be proud of. After applying to universities in England, I was accepted already in March my final year. Obviously – science subjects and a good math grade wasn’t necessary.
I finished my bachelor’s degree, and 3 years into my fashion career I realized that what I liked the most about my job was working with the IT systems, with clothes being a good second best. I started looking into jobs in IT, but with neither education nor experience, I was going nowhere. The schools I was looking at required difficult math and physics, so I went back to school. With my bad math grade from high school in mind, re-doing it was hard. But, after a full year of studying alongside a full-time job the hard work paid off – I passed all subjects and was accepted at my first school of choice.
The beginning of the first semester was hard, and I spent a lot of time not understanding programming and calculus especially. Crying at home became a weekly routine. Mid-way into the second semester it finally clicked. I suddenly understood and programming was suddenly fun, and my grades went from barely passing to very good.
At a social event at the university, a girl in the year above me and I started discussing the number of girls vs. boys in computer science, and how it seemed similar in other fields within the faculty. We barely knew each other, but we were both passionate about girls and women in tech and science, and we wanted to do something about it. This is how our student organization for girls and non-binary tech and science students at UiT was born.
Diversity in technology is crucial when developing new products. By getting input from people with different genders, backgrounds and ideas I believe we think bigger, better and more inclusive. New products will be more adapted to its intended consumer. This is why recruiting more women into technology and science is something I enjoy working towards. By giving young adults and children role models to look up to, and to motivate and inspire them, I believe the technology in the future will be better and more diverse.
Our student organization is currently working towards this goal in several ways. We are working with the university to recruit more women for our programs by attending inspiration days, open days and talking to students in secondary school to guide them towards choosing science subjects early. At the university we are actively trying to create an open and social meeting place for all female and non-binary students, so that an otherwise tough school day with tough subjects and very few other women and non-binary to support them, seems a little more achievable. Finally, we aim to introduce our amazing students to Norwegian and local companies with an equal mindset of equality when hiring new employees.
Attending this year’s womENcourage conference gave me the opportunity to listen to intelligent people talk about their research, and it inspired me a lot. Hearing about all the different ways new technology can be developed, if we only take more people’s perspective into account, was fascinating and motivating. Leaving Trondheim, I was extra motivated to get back to university and keep up the hard work so that one day I can work with whatever I wish to.
The conference was open, inclusive and contained a lot of interesting talks and workshops. It gave us the opportunity to meet like minded students and companies. Next year’s conference is an event I would like to attend and is something I would recommend to all students wishing to learn more about and discuss this topic. If you attend the conference with an open mind and eager to learn, you will find you will leave with a major motivation and inspiration boost.