‘Better to be a Slytherin than a Ravenclaw’: Red Bud teen wants to go to MIT

Lauren Crowe is getting ready to start her freshman year at Red Bud High School. One day, she hopes to say the same of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The 14-year-old wants to eventually have a career in science, technology, engineering or math. She hasn’t decided which one yet. But Lauren’s goal is to hone her skills at MIT.

Lauren says she’s constantly determined to prove to herself and others that she can do it — whatever it might be. And that’s a characteristic she values.

Being smart is great, Lauren says, but “the thing that will take you further is being ambitious.”

Another way she puts it is that “it’s better to be a Slytherin than a Ravenclaw,” referencing the houses of the fictional school for witches and wizards from the “Harry Potter” book series. Ravenclaws have wit and wisdom, while Slytherins are ambitious and cunning, according to author J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website.

Lauren, an avid reader in her spare time, says she is a Slytherin.

While she’s not yet nailed down her career aspirations or settled on a college major, Lauren’s favorite subject in school at the moment is math. She enjoys it because it’s logical. Lauren says she’s not a very creative person.

Computer programming has recently piqued her interest, though, because it allows her to use logic and just a little bit of creativity through designing the layout of websites and coding on the “back end,” the part that makes the sites work but that a user doesn’t see.

She got her first taste of coding in Ms. Green’s eighth-grade computer class at Red Bud Elementary School. Then, outside of the classroom, she taught herself how to use the programming language JavaScript for a science fair project.

Lauren continued expanding her skills last month when she spent two weeks of her summer vacation in a class building a website for “lazy science enthusiasts,” according to Lauren. The website aggregates science news by linking to other sites that already exist, so a user can search in one place for recent updates on the topic or topics they’re interested in — from biology to astronomy.

Some other girls from the class had to handle “making it pretty,” as Lauren puts it, with the color and font choices of the site. She preferred to help map out the site’s structure and use another programming language, Ruby, to control its function.

Lauren said more than 1,000 girls applied to participate in the class, which is an initiative by fashion model Karlie Kloss called Kode With Klossy to teach girls to code and encourage them to pursue careers in STEM fields. Classes were held this year in the model’s hometown of St. Louis, where Lauren was taught, as well as New York City and Los Angeles.

Q: What do you like about coding?

A: “I like being able to build something with code. There are different parts to code: you can either have the front end, which is basically how everything looks, or you can have the back end, which is how everything works. I prefer the back end. ... I’m not very creative, so the back end is where I can logically fit everything together instead of creatively.

... I like being able to solve problems by myself. You can just sit down with your laptop and create a website where you can fix an issue that somebody has. And I like that I can use these skills to help people. ... Even if it’s just a small problem, it’s something that I fixed and I can go on to create even more things like this.”

Q: How did it feel to be accepted into the Kode With Klossy program?

A: “Well, actually, there was a glitch, so I think 90 percent of the people, at least in St. Louis that made it, they got a rejection letter first, including me. So it was really disappointing. And then when I did make it — they sent an email later saying, ‘Sorry, that was a mistake’ — it felt probably better than it would have if I just made it.

It was really exciting because I knew I would be able to expand my skills in something that I love. ... It’s a lot more intensive than school, but it’s a lot more enjoyable than school because everybody wanted to be there. ... Every day you came home exhausted, but I loved it.”

Q: Describe the website you created through the program.

A: “Instead of going to all these different science websites and having to sort through them, if you just like astronomy, computer science and physics, you can come here and then it will give you links to three different places. It will give you (recent) news on that certain subject. ... It was a lot of work. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it can get pretty complex.”

Q: Was the programming language Ruby new to you?

A: “Yes. For the science fair, when I did that, I taught myself JavaScript, so it was two different languages, and it’s hard to adjust. We also learned HTML and CSS (at Kode With Klossy), which does the front end, the designing.”

Q: What did you create for the science fair using JavaScript?

A: “I did equations. The equation I did for science fair was ax + b = c. I’ve done many equations in JavaScript since then. I’ve done the quadratic formula, the Pythagorean theorem, all the standard formulas for math.”

Q: How does Ruby differ from JavaScript?

A: “The syntax, which is like parentheses and brackets and stuff — it’s different. There’s a few different commands. It’s basically the same set up. I would compare it to, let’s say, JavaScript is English, Ruby would be Spanish. You just have to adapt to it, but it’s not much different.”

Q: How did you first get interested in coding?

A: “Our computer teacher at our school wanted us to do this website, and it was code.org. It was block-based coding, which means you don’t actually type anything in; It just gives you little blocks that you can drag and put them together. So you don’t see any of the code, but you’re doing it. And I loved it. I went ahead of everybody else. I finished the whole entire program when most people were still in the first (course).”

Q: What advice would you give to someone who thinks coding is too difficult for them to learn?

A: “It looks like a bunch of gibberish, but once you learn the commands, it’s basically English. But you just have to put it into terms the computer would understand.

... Definitely go into computer science or at least learn something because it’s so big, and it’s going to continue getting bigger.

... It’s an easily self-taught skill. I taught myself at home through websites. I would just spend 30 minutes a day because I was learning it for the science fair, so I was kind of on a deadline. I set myself up on a program: 30 minutes on the weekends and like 10 minutes during the week, just to get into a habit so I would know to do it.”

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not in school?

A: “I like to watch a lot of TV shows. I just really like stories, so movies, TV shows, reading, all of those things.”

This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 7:00 AM with the headline "‘Better to be a Slytherin than a Ravenclaw’: Red Bud teen wants to go to MIT."