My first taste of the tech world was in high school through a required Introduction to Computer Science course. That entire semester I was bored and listless, not fully able to grasp the power of programming without concrete examples of applications in the real world. The closest I got to understanding how code could be implemented in the real world was building Fruit Ninja in Racket.
I’ll eventually write about the end of my senior year of college, my summer, and the start of my Masters program, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so until I address the virus that has been plaguing the country (and the world as a whole!) for centuries. Racism.
While most students have left Ithaca, New York, the quaint city Cornell is located in, due to an administrative order for students to move out of on-campus housing — a proactive measure against the COVID-19 crisis — and as the spring term comes to a close, Caitlin Stanton stays in her apartment near the campus. Since the university has transitioned to online classes, Caitlin has had to grapple with the dichotomy between social distancing and a normally collaborative engineering environment.
Almost two weeks ago, I held my last Chapter meeting as the president of the Beta Chi chapter of Alpha Omega Epsilon. To all 50 of you who I’m grateful to be able to call my sisters: thank you for everything.
This past April, I flew to Cupertino on a whim to give a TED Talks. Being only 20 years old at the time, I was completely out of my comfort zone, from seeing invitation in my LinkedIn inbox to taking my first steps onto that stage. Looking back, however, it was honestly one of the greatest decisions I've ever made—it gave me the chance to speak on a national platform, which was something I didn't even think I'd get to do in my career, let alone before graduating college.
Internships, much like every other new experience, start off with the same kinds of hopes and intentions. You come in eager to meet new people, build cool products, and learn new tech. This summer was especially exciting: I would be working in a new place with electrical engineers on a hardware-related project. In all honesty, when I landed in Seattle sleep-deprived and lugging all of my suitcases, I couldn’t stop smiling.
Little did I know what would happen twelve weeks later.
If I’m not bringing my work home with me, what have I been doing for the past six weeks? To put it bluntly, a metric butt ton.
I spent my last night of junior year studying in Duffield, frantically cramming telecom notes into my head while my mom helped pack up my room, rather than hanging out with my friends or going to bed at a decent time. In all honesty, however, how I spent my last night was pretty representative of how I spent my entire year.
Saturday morning I was taking my last final as a junior and Monday morning I was going to New Employee Orientation to kick off my summer as an electrical engineering intern.
“The Earth is what we all have in common.”
— Wendell Berry
This blog is a prime example of how I tend to put too many obligations on my plate at once.
Electrical engineers know that they need to learn about analog devices and lab techniques if they want to pursue a career in circuitry. Computer scientists know that learning Python and Java will get you on any company’s payroll. But for entrepreneurs, wha't’s the process? There are so many stories of college dropouts becoming multi-millionaires with a single, life-changing idea, but very few that are relatable to the average 20-something.
In celebration of International Day of the Girl, Girls Who Code created the Sisterh>>d Campaign, a campaign I was able to assist with as part of the Sisterh>>d Advisory Council!
This is a generation of girls showing up for something bigger than themselves. Sisterh>>d is a digital visual album celebrating young women driving our most transformative movements — and calling on girls around the world to join them.
Want to listen to the melodious sound of my voice? Check out my latest episode on the #100daysofcode podcast by Marlon Avery!
As a fellow for @rewritingthecode, I was given the opportunity to write a blog post for the official RTC website! ✍🏻 I focused on the time leading up to the acceptance of my offer for an internship at Qualcomm, a story which I haven’t heard from many other people
Are ya one? Are ya two? Are ya three?
Stop stop stop, I’m twenty. Yep, two whole decades. W o w.
I'm now almost 20 and I already have two tattoos. The people around me used to believe that having more tattoos equaled more "street cred", that being inked could be misconstrued as less professional than I am, but that's not the case anymore.
I've written and spoken about my hackathon experiences many time, so much so that my former high school classmates know me as "the hackathon girl." I typically consider myself to be a hackathon expert, merely due to the fact that I've attended nearly a dozen hackathons, co-founded and been head organizer for four different hackathon organizations, and become a large part of the NYC hackathon scene. Hack Mobile was different.
For the first time ever, I was featured in a publication without writing a single word. “How did she do it?” you may ask yourself. Two simple syllables: podcast. I recently was on an episode of Lydia Jones’s podcast thelydperiod, and it was truly one of the most fun features I’ve done!
Ever since I heard that first g-note in "Welcome to the Black Parade", I wanted to find people my age who listened to my kind of music, and Warped Tour seemed to be that place for me. Until this year, I never had the chance to go—it was either too far or too expensive or on the wrong day. So when I realized that I'd be in San Diego at the same time as Warped Tour ... well I absolutely *had* to go.
