To the sophomores without even a resume…
I’m writing this to try and “give back” to the great hackathon community. It was a source of motivation, passion, and comfort for me when I needed it and if this post provides any of those emotions to even a single person, I will be ecstatic.
I’m going to start this post out with some recognition for a few blog posts that have meant a lot to me over the last year and a half. I’d like to thank the authors of these and all of the hackathon community bloggers for creating such inspirational and motivational content.
This post by Dave Fontenot showed me that, as someone who hadn’t seen a single line of code before college…
“I wasn’t going to catch up to the students who had been hacking away since puberty by sitting right next to them in class, doing the exact same things they were doing…”
Dave has a lot of great posts on here, but this one opened my eyes a lot. It helped me realize how important out-of-classroom learning is and that a college degree is not the end-all metric of success when it comes to the software industry.
This amazing contribution by Amy Chen has served as a rallying cry for me ever since she posted it. I know what it’s like to switch majors and be a sophomore applying (late) for CS internships while only having a little over a semester of computer science experience. I felt an enormous amount of inspiration and determination after reading this post for the first time and I’ve gone back and read over it again multiple times when I start to feel my determination slip.
I found this post by Ian Malpass just browsing some collections one morning last summer. This was the first Medium post that really resonated with me. At the time, I was just finishing up my first semester of computer science and this post felt completely aimed at me, and it helped set the tone for the upcoming school year.
Lastly, because internships are so invaluable, this guide to getting one by Cassidy Williams is an extremely good start-to-finish resource. Read it, follow it, share it.
Now, on to my story
Three months ago I saw a flyer outside of a classroom for a career fair. Being a sophomore CS major with no experience, no personal projects, and not even a resume, I didn’t think I had any reason to go. I’d talked to some classmates that shared the same sentiments about going, and didn’t really think it would be worth my time; but then I remembered something...
“I wasn’t going to catch up to the students who had been hacking away since puberty by sitting right next to them in class, doing the exact same things they were doing…”
So I threw together a resume the night before and printed ten copies the next morning. I asked “Are you taking any sophomore level interns this summer?” over fifteen times, and almost every time I got “Sorry, we’ve already filled our spots for the summer” or “Sorry, we’re already into our interview process for the summer.”
I left feeling a little rejected; I’d screwed up and missed the boat. I felt a lot of different emotions at this time; I was angry with myself for being late to apply for internships, I was regretful for never actually committing to a personal project, but most of all I was motivated to do my best to never put myself in that position again. I may not get an internship this summer, but you’d better believe I’m starting the prep for next summer right now.
At this point, I’d been a member of the Hackathon Hackers facebook group for about six or seven months. I hadn’t really contributed, but I loved the community and I lurked the group for at least an hour everyday. I loved the culture and I wanted to attend a hackathon so badly, but there was no way I could afford to drive myself from St. Louis to Ann Arbor for MHacks, or to Philadelphia for PennApps, and I didn’t think I could even get into HackIllinois.
Then I found it; RedbirdHacks. This hackathon was being hosted at Illinois State University and at just over a two hour drive, I promised myself that if I got in, I would drive myself to Bloomington-Normal alone if I had to. I ended up finding two classmates who wanted to attend as well; we registered, were accepted and then made the drive and had an amazing time there building MusiQ, but that’s a different post for a different week.
I returned after that weekend to a week of finals and a job posting in my school email. A local company was looking to hire a web development intern for the summer and possibly the whole year. I was just finishing up my Intro to Web Systems and Databases class, and had really enjoyed working on some of the JavaScript and PHP assignments we had. I figured I had nothing to lose and I emailed my resume.
For the next four weeks, I went through the interview process and studied all of the material I could. I had been given a second shot at a sophomore internship and I wasn’t going to let myself screw this chance up. I wanted to be sure that the only way I would get beat out for this internship is that someone else beat me; I was not going to let myself beat me.
I knew that there were going to be others applying for the position who would have way more experience and projects than I did, but I refused to get beat in terms of passion, motivation, and hard work.
I’ve been working at the internship for a little over a month now and I couldn’t be any more happy. I’m getting paid to learn about things that I am very passionate about; things that I would show up to learn about even without pay.
To any of you out there that have made it this far because you feel like this post was written for you, the best piece of advice I can give you is…
“You’ve gotta want it more”
Because if you don’t want it, like really want it, there will be someone out there outworking you for that chance. But if you have the passion, determination, and hunger to succeed, people will see this, you will get your chance, and if you truly want it more, then…
“All you need is one chance.”
-Amy Chen
