Life Update
I originally started writing this blog post on September 7th, 2016… That was nearly six months ago… Did I get too busy to ever finish it and post it? yeah. Am I still determined to post it even though it’s six months later? yeah. When I first had the idea to write a “life update” for myself, I wrote that I “honestly cannot believe that it is already September.” Now it’s six months later and even more so than before, I cannot believe that it’s already march… I guess that’s what happens when you’re extremely busy!
I’m very lucky to be able to say that, for the most part, I’m busy doing things I love, but there are still things that occupy my time and keep me busy that I do not love to do(I am currently sitting in my “Words and Music” class and this is one thing I really wish I was not doing).
One of the most exciting things I can tell you about is that I am a Major League Hacking coach. Over the past school year I have traveled to 9 different Hackathon events all over the US and even in Canada. It may sound crazy because I’m so busy all the time, but I honestly love it so much. I love feeling like I’m actually doing amazing and useful things with my life. I’ve had the opportunity to visit cities like New York City, San Diego, Seattle, and Nashville along with many others, all while doing a job that I love so much.
On top of traveling a lot both for MLH and for myself, I am also taking 17 credit hours this semester. This may sound awful, and it is, I’m going to get it done. I want nothing more than to be done with school so I can get out into the world and actually start using my time to do meaningful work. I feel like school 87.4% of the time is useless information and they never actually teach us information that will be applied in the real world. Personally I think the only way I actually learn is by doing what I’m learning while I’m learning it, which is why I started HackCU two years ago.
HackCU is the 36-hour, which is now a 24-hour, hackathon that I co-founded with Dawson Botsford and Alex Campbell two years ago. I am now Director of HackCU and this year our goal is to grow the hackathon from ~255 hackers to ~400 hackers. If you’re confused or concerned about what a hackathon is or think that I’m hacking into servers illegally, that’s not at all what it is. A hackathon is a programming competition where contestants have 24 or 36 hours to complete a project of their choosing. So basically students work on creating a project that could turn into a business or a project that is just a fun program that they’ve been wanting to create or anything else they might come up with. The hackers only have 24 or 36 hours to start, build, and complete their projects.
To make HackCU grow in the way that we want to, our team has been working extremely hard in the past few months. We have had to secure a larger event space, fundraise more money that we’ve ever come close to fundraising in the past, and also stay organized and on top of everything for the HackCU team. It’s been extremely, extremely hectic. There have been ups and there have been downs, but my team is the best that it could be to make it happen and I am so proud of all of them.
It’s no coincidence that I’ve been talking a lot about traveling this year, traveling has become a large part of my life and I would definitely consider 2016/2017 the year of traveling for myself. Along with traveling to 8 different cities for my job, I took a 3 week trip to Europe. It was the first time I traveled out of North America, the first time I traveled alone, and also one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. I’m planning on writing another post entirely about Europe so definitely be one the look out for that!
I’m also working on a startup called Glimpse. Glimpse is a social adventure platform aiming to take all the wasted energy spent on social media and redirect it into exploring the world by meeting new people from all over the world and seeing what their lives are like. I wrote two blog posts that go more in depth into what it is and what I started it. Here is the first one and here is the second one.
Two of my biggest hobbies are Instagram and Youtube. Whenever I have the time I want to be taking pictures or making videos and I really wish I had more time to do this. I’ve recently met some awesome friends who are also really into videography and photography and they just really inspire me to continue creating content. I’ve been posting on Instagram daily for a little while now and I want to start posting on YouTube once a week. It is so frustrating when school gets in the way of me doing what I’m passionate about, but there’s not much I can do to change that right now. Like right now I’ve got a vlog that is 50% edited and I wanted to post it two days ago, but I can’t finish the edit because I have to write two papers for one of my classes. Oh well. If you’re interested here is my Instagram and my YouTube.
Overall life is going extremely well and I’m stoked on the things that have been going on lately. That’s certainly not to say that everything is perfect or that there is nothing I would change. No ones life is perfect, but I try very hard to make the best of every situation and be happy even when things might not be the best. Right now I am very happy though.
