I was rejected to Hack the North 2018 in my last year at uWaterloo. (((Yeah, about that... I had attended it twice before, so my last application was quite similar to the previous ones. I guess that’s one of the reasons they rejected me.
It hurt a lot for me, since it was my last term in Waterloo, and I would really love to attend it for ONE LAST TIME before graduation. I was in a really burnt-out and sentimental mode. Back then HTN was “the only fresh” thing I was looking forward to. Plus I only got to see my hackathon fam once a year during HTN, we all had different work/ study sequences.
It’s kinda sad, but okay. I guess that also means I’m no longer that cute and young second-year girl I was before. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (((Wait, was I ever?
Anyway, on my road trip from Seattle to Vancouver last year, I made a list of the stuff I would like to do if I had gotten accepted.
So here’s my imaginary ONE LAST HACK todo list before graduation:
(other than hacking with my hackathon fam)
- Definitely get that hack the north hat (sometimes they gave it out in the hackers’ swag)
- Collect another 15 usb drives from different companies (the trick is to avoid any eye contact)
- Collect another Square canvas bag (if they still have that at hackathon && need to solve their coding questions)
- 2 more fidget spinners togo please (I collected 5 different colours of them before, so I still need 2 more to make a set…)
- Small android robot keychain from Google booth (somehow these tiny green bugs just escaped from my keychain every single year!)
- Attend late night karaoke and get your own boba tea, plus the beaver tails (get high on sugar)
- Another HTN demo sticker
- Save the entrance pass as the last memories
IDK why, but this list just looks like a shopping list. 🤦♀ ((( I guess I was really exhausted that term then.
A more practical version would probably be like:
- Join the FB group for participates, team up with interesting ppl or ppl you would like to work with. Also check the slack channel and HTN radio channel constantly for news.
- When building the team, it will be really useful if you have someone with strong design skills on the team. It might help if you have someone with business background/ product ppl to assist the demo. (Really depends on the projects and team).
- Before attending, you may want to bring a sleeping bag if you need some good rest in between. E6 also provide showering and sleeping area.
- Make sure you find a comfortable spot before hacking begins, once it begins, people will be “fighting” over good seats (i.e. closed to food or quiet place) and space.
- Go to HH early to secure a nice spot for opening ceremony. You can leave early if you find it not that interesting. (I usually stayed there playing my phone for the latter half of ceremony, cuz I found it rude to leave early…)
- Before brainstorming, check the sponsors on htn site, and talk to people at the sponsor booth, know what projects/ ideas they expect from the given APIs/ services
- Before demoing, pitch at least twice. Make sure your demo program works and demonstrate your theme clearly.
- In between hackings, check out the hiring booths in E6 “garage”, make sure you make some connections with the hiring recruiter there. You can easily get some internship referrals from there
- If time permitted, try to attend some of the workshops/ try out some fancy hardware provided at HTN
- Hacking is VERY important, but make sure you also make full use of the rest of your time during HTN to enjoy it. They also have yoga and VR gaming stuff.
What actually happened last year during HTN for me:
I still managed to get in with a sponsor “entrance”, since I interned at one of the sponsor companies before. So I got the sponsor badge to see it one last time. Also because I didn’t need to hack, things were not that intense for me. I got to see it in a nice and slow pace.
However, I spent most of that weekend working on CS458 A1, I think it’s really wise to reject someone like me. I could not understand anything about buffer overflow at that time, so I spent all my weekend on assignments. I was reading the given materials and super worried if I can handle my freaking last term with CS343/458/349 + CO351 (I’m not that strong or smart).
It turned out all okay in the end for me, but just okay. Thank Mr Goose 🙏
- Special thanks to my brother J.W. and my hackathon buddies, you’re the reasons my CS life at uWaterloo isn’t that depressing and stressful. ❤️
