My Life


Robin Johnson's tearing down some serious stereotypes.

Math and science have long been male-dominant fields, but 18-year-old Robin Johnson is looking to change that—and in a very fashionable way. Enter: Math@Work, the high school senior's new video series with Scholastic.

"Fashion has always been something I've been obsessed with—in addition to my pre-med aspirations," Robin explains. "I go to fashion shows and I'm fascinated by how people dress. I even wrote about fashion in one of my college essays! It's a very big part of my life, especially living in New York. Because I also have math-oriented thinking, I started to see math in what I was wearing."

And so her wheels started turning: Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to incorporate fashion into math lessons, particularly for girls who shy away from the sciences?

"I wanted to show that even if you want to do something that's not in the science field, it doesn't mean those skills aren't important," she says. "People think about fashion as being art, and that art can't coexist with science or math. I wanted to bridge that gap."

And so the idea of a web series was born. Through her mom, a lobbyist for the CFDA, Robin was put in touch with Tim Gunn, who eagerly agreed to host. Then designer Diane von Furstenberg committed to appear, and Scholastic signed on to produce. Suddenly Robin's dream was pretty much realized: Her series, targeted to middle schoolers, will now be shown in classrooms across the country.

While the premiere episode tackles math in the fashion space (and stars Robin and two other style-obsessed students, alongside Gunn and DVF), future episodes will apply mathematics to various other fields. "I want this to go beyond kids being like, 'Oh yeah, I watched that video in class,'" says Robin. "I want to see a rise in students, particularly girls, really getting into math and being excited about it."

Check out Diane von Furstenberg and Tim Gunn's Math@Work fashion episode below!

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