I learned a lot over the course of my sophomore year, from wiring a circuit to figuring out how much sleep my body needs (the hard way), but one of the most worthwhile experiences I had was one that was a little surprising. All the way back in February, I attended my very first hardware hackathon.
Now that I'm heading into my fourth week as an intern at Qualcomm, I figured it was time to sit down and actually write about my (so far!) amazing experience in San Diego.
I was invited to attend the Qualcomm Student Accelerator in San Diego last weekend, and I had the time of my life! Meeting new people, learning about everything Qualcomm has done and is doing, and hacking hardware for the first time - it was a whirlwind.
Women Who Reign is an organization that features and praises women for their initiatives and efforts in all aspects of technology and entrepreneurship. I was interviewed for my hackathon initiatives and asked to give my own advice to young girls thinking about pursuing that kind of career.
The amazing writer who interviewed me gave this article the tagline: "Cornell University’s Caitlin Stanton is a force in the coding world who founded her own coding hackathon and program." It's the first time I've heard the force used to describe myself and not a physics problem set ;)
This was the first time i had ever been called a rockstar in a non-ironic way, which made me feel extremely accomplished :)
Caitlin Stanton is an entrepreneur, a young digital activist and a freshman at Cornell University. She has been active in the internet health movement as a partner and learning advocate. She is a member of our first cohort of "Network50.”
As part of being nominated for the Mozilla Network50, I wrote about my experience as a high school hackathon founder and organizer.
Due to my very public love for hackathons and hackathon culture, I was featured as one of 100 people who impacted the world in some way, chosen by Impact Squared.
After connecting with Mozilla as a sponsor for def hacks(), they connected with me to learn more about my work with STEM education and my journey to becoming a hackathon founder.
The Huffington Post and Ford teamed up to find 20 people under 20 that they deemed to be STEAM pioneers, and I was honored enough to be nominated for it!
I'm not gonna lie. As of 11:21pm on Sunday July 10th, 2016, I am officially the worst. I made a promise to myself (and, more importantly, the all-powerful Internet) to actually use this blog on a regular basis, and I didn't.
You would've thought that having to pay for both the website and the domain would encourage me to use my money to the fullest extent possible...
Whoops!
Being a participant in the Girls Who Code program pushed me onto the path to fill one of the millions of technical jobs that will sprout up in the future. To give more girls an idea of what the program was like and its benefits, I walked Media Planet through a day during that program in the summer of 2014.
After graduating from the Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program in the summer of 2014 and working for #BUILTBYGIRLS the following summer, I was interviewed by Girls Who Code to see how the program affected where I am today.
It's no surprise that I spend most of my time at hackathons. I mean, where else can I get free food, vaguely interact with other people, and sit on my laptop for hours on end without being fervently judged?
Not that def hacks() is as place to be judged. Well, at least not by people who aren't judges :)
