Firsts? In 1997?

When I graduated from an engineering college, I never dreamed that I would be a pioneer. Women were already in engineering, right? One year later, I discovered that me and my mother were the first mother-daughter pair to graduate from the college. One year after that, I found myself to be the first female engineer hired by a local engineering company. Twenty years later, I’m still here and I’m making noise. Many a frustration comes when I express a thought in a meeting and am ignored only to watch an older man express my same thought and be heard. I fight on. I prove myself because I have to, I don’t quit, and I’m not quiet. They will not hold me back.