Process documentation

The sawing went fairly smoothly, though I did find it difficult to follow the lines I drew. I had to drill the four corner holes on the top piece twice since I used a drill bit that was too small the first time. After that, screwing in the legs and CPX went smoothly.

Final product

Prior to this class, my sense of belongingness related to woodworking was fairly neutral. I had not done woodworking before and was slightly nervous to be working with several of the tools, but I wouldn't say that my sense of belongingness was affected because of this nervousness. However, my self-efficacy was slightly challenged as I imagined working with the tools and accidentally hurting myself.  Kris' woodworking lesson was very helpful and I found that active listening improved my sense of belonging and self-efficacy. These were challenged again as I went to the wood shop by myself outside of class hours - I was worried that I would forget some safety tool or technique, but instead found that I retained a lot of information and thereby further strengthened my sense of belongingness and self-efficacy.  I feel more comfortable in the wood shop space and would like to learn how to use more tools.

Sense of belonging played a large part in my experience in computer sciences classes during my first two years of college. I attended a large research university my freshman and sophomore years, where the classroom makeup largely mirrored that of the current tech industry. The aspect that affected me the most was the lack of gender diversity - I was often the only girl in my small classes, and one of a handful in the large lecture halls. I didn't face any explicit othering due to my gender, but felt the effects in subtle ways - things like male TAs not asking the female students their names or male classmates hesitating to work with me. 

These tendencies, in addition to not seeing myself represented in classrooms, negatively affected my sense of belonging. This feeling wasn't entirely what pushed me to transfer schools, but it was one reason I wanted to attend a historically women's college. I spent a lot of effort as an underclassman advocating for myself and seeking additional help in CS, which was pretty draining. I would tell my former self to keep going with my efforts and that seeking space that explicitly values the sense of belonging of its members is really worthwhile.