Impact Of Hackathons

In my first hackathon, HackGenY in California, I only had just started programming. I had done all the courses in Codecademy before then but I still didn’t feel like a “programmer”. I had the idea that a programmer was a genius who could whip up an app easily. I was by far the least experienced in my team. They were all patient with me and we all had a blast creating an app for helping people find Medium articles by time:

Most importantly, I recall the mentors and fellow participants who offered to help me throughout the hackathon after seeing me struggle which helped me build confidence in myself to pursue programming. More importantly, it made me realize how important it is to contribute back to your own community.

Meeting and talking to people who were super passionate about creating and changing the world inspired me to my current programming endeavors in education and politics.

So, if I hadn’t participated in my first hackathon, I doubt I would have chosen to continue to program.

Now, I’ve created my own Creatathon (a more hands on hackathon with mentors and workshops targeted at middle schoolers) for my community, Wellesley: WellesleyCreatAthons!