The word “hack” makes most high schools nervous.

The widespread definition of the word (one that will take some time to change as it has been propagated by pop culture) is “to gain unauthorized access to data in a system.” This is what prevents most high school hackathon proposals from acceptance.

If schools could look beyond this word then every high school in the nation would have a hackathon.

That is why when I approached the principal of my high school with my proposal, I asked him “What do you think hack means?” The following conversation went a little bit like this:

Principal: (This 15-year-old is asking me questions? Wtf?) “From my knowledge, hack can either mean to cut or chop, or to steal someone’s online information.”

Myself: (Darn) “Before we begin, I’d like to bring forth a more current definition, ‘a piece of computer code providing a quick or inelegant solution to a particular problem.’ I am a hacker, I don’t steal data, I don’t cut or chop things. I write code. I write code that solves problems, I write code for fun, I write code to learn.”