A hackathon. “A what?”
This year has been full of growth, struggles, change, and experiences for me already. Growth especially within my career path. I was officially accepted into my major, Computer Science and Engineering, over the summer and therefore have started my true major courses. I have even accepted my first internship for this summer with MTD Products and will be living on my own for the first time.
As someone who came into college with no coding experience and no idea if CSE was actually for me, I can tell you I am in the right place. I love it so much. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my college experience, and honestly right now I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my future career. A huge indicator of this realization was my first ever Hackathon. Ohio State hosts its very own hackathon here at the Ohio Union and I was blessed with the opportunity to participate! A hackathon is a 24-hour marathon of building, coding, or designing something great with a team of other students. My team spent our time building an app with Swift that provides “scores” and data to clients based on their reliability of paying back borrowed money from others and then allowing money to be borrowed through the app- being able to choose if you can trust someone based on their score or data provided. Although I learned a lot working on our project, it was just so amazing to see thousands of other students working alongside us and to see what brilliant ideas were formed and created in just 24 hours. That is when I texted my mom. I knew this was where I belonged: I was thriving off this environment! I would just walk around when I was taking a break and awe at all the brilliant students working away and then remember I am one of them too! We all drank cups and cups of coffee and kept each other laughing the whole time. We researched and learned new things to get our app to work and we even got to talk with huge companies!
This event was more than just a resume-booster for me. This event gave me the glimpse into what I want in my future and I am oh so grateful. Thank you OSU for yet another amazing opportunity.