A tip people always give about interviews is to be truthful about what you’re capable of so that they can test you on what you’re capable of and not what you’re not. The problem for me is, I don’t feel like I’m capable of anything?? When I was younger, I would tell people that I was capable of whatever they threw at me, somehow figure it out, and none would be the wiser. But now, it’s a real scramble trying to get my shit together, and it doesn’t always work out.
I disappeared from school for three days for a tech interview! I didn’t tell anybody except for a few friends (my roomie, our friend who we had stay over at our apartment whilst I was gone, and another friend) because I was so nervous and didn’t want to get overhyped. I had never done a tech interview before (or any interview, to be honest… I’ve somehow managed to escape them), so to be flown out for my first one was completely mind-boggling! Before getting this interview, I did a phone interview where I talked about myself for a bit and did two coding challenges. I was so nervous for that phone interview. The guy who was interviewing me told me that he had worked in China for a bit, so when I was telling him about myself, I said that I used to live in China. He asked when, and that was where I stumbled a bit. I couldn’t for the life of me remember which year I had moved to China. When people ask me, I usually just say after 4th grade, but that means nothing to an adult who’s been out of school for years! After a few miscalculations, I arrived at the conclusion that I lived in China from 2006 to 2014. As we continued with the interview, I got more comfortable, but I was still on edge. Which is why I was completely surprised when I got the email about the final round of interviews!
Before this photoshoot, I was shooting in the city with Kat (full blog post here). I had scheduled these shoots back to back on the same day because I just did not have any other time this month. Anyways, before the BMC class of 2018 spring photoshoot officially started, I wanted to warm up and experiment a bit with Kat. Yes, we had just spent the whole morning shooting together, but this was more about figuring out how to work with the environment rather than how to work with the model. I figured that the modeling for this shoot wouldn’t be too complicated or out-there-creative; it would probably mostly be people wanting profiles and pictures with friends.
Like my good friend Stephanie said, “Why are we having four seasons in one day??” I think that’s a pretty accurate description of the weather right now. But in between Mother Nature’s mood swings, I’ve gotten a taste of autumn here and there, and it tastes golden. All that’s left to do is to spice it with some pumpkins and good friends.
The first time I heard of a hackathon, I imagined a bunch of nerds breaking through cyber security systems. In fact, this is not the kind of “hack” that people are referring to when they talk about hackathons. Instead, what happens is that a bunch of nerds spend 24 hours making cool projects, sleep optional.
This is why I love having a blog. I can look back and see where I was. The week before HackMIT, I wrote on the blog that I was very anxious about participating in my first hackathon and being in an intimidating environment with so many experienced people. Now having gone and come back, I can confirm that there were many things I didn’t know about, but once again, I didn’t need to be such a worry wart. Although there were quite a few things we weren’t sure about, like how to connect to wifi (more on that later), there was one thing we were sure about: we definitely had a lot of fun.
*This post is not sponsored by Zinus, but I’m giving their Back to School Scholarship Contest a go.*
I haven’t been able to stop talking about how much I love living in my own apartment off campus. Some of my friends had temporary stints over the summer (as did I), so we’ve been swapping lifehacks. For example, some of my friends would go for super comfy but also super expensive mattresses they’d never buy but would only need for the summer that a free trial could cover.
But I need my mattress for longer than that, so as clever as that scheme was, it wouldn’t work in my case. Luckily, I didn’t have to look around for long. One of my friends spent his summer on his friend’s Zinus mattress, and he said it was fantastic, so he recommended it to me when he knew I was looking for one.