Author Archives: c.rodriguez11

Before you go on asking questions. Let me explain. Today I took a few assessments on the Focus2Career website. They asked about what I’d like to do on my leisure time, what my work interests are, what skills I possess and what values I hold the highest. Supposedly, using this type of information, it should tell me which career seems best suited for me.

Now, personally I’d like to pursue a career somewhere in the IT field. Perhaps I’d be a software engineer, a systems administrator, or (and this is ambitious of me) Chief Technology Officer. I’ve always been interested in computers ever since I got one as a little kid. My father worked in the IT field when I was young, so I guess it’s in the genes, somewhat.

And you know what, the assessments pointed that yes, that career was the right one for me. I’d be like “tell me something I don’t know,” but this surprises me. I’ve been told that these assessments are pretty inaccurate. One of my friends was suggested that she should be a Biology teacher (nowhere near close to what she wants to do). Even as a former tutor, that would be the last thing to cross my mind as a career. Sure, I have a knack for explaining things (maybe too much) and I always want to help others understand, but I know teaching a group of 30 kids isn’t my line of work. I’ve already had to teach groups of up to 10, but that’s another story in of itself.

I’m serious when I’m making that statement. As a nerd myself (and very proudly so), I’d like to say that hackathons are not these super exclusive events for the “techy” types. Sure, some of them have their merit/skill requirements. However, for the majority of them, all you need is your interest in attending, and maybe a laptop.

The majority of them include a competition of some sort that happens over the course of the event. For example, a certain problem or challenge is given, and the task is to create a program or application responding to that problem. Teams are assembled, and people have a certain amount of time to design, test, and create their solution. Then, the projects are presented in front of a panel of judges, and a winner is declared.

Now that might turn off some people. Wouldn’t you need coding experience to even create a program? Yes, but who says you have to code?

If you’re not knowledgeable on the programming side of things, there’s still room for you to participate. If you’re the artsy type, creating eye-popping graphics for your team can be your main task. And, after all, presentation is the most important!

If you don’t believe yourself to be talented in anything, then speak up when an idea comes to mind. Communication is key, and you might just be the start of a great idea!

At the end of the day, whatever talent you might have (or don’t have) will be a valuable asset to your team. Hackathons are social events at its core, and they bring strangers together to make something great. And also, it isn’t the Olympics, everyone wins something, like t-shirts or other cool stuff.

I’m just saying, give it a try at least once!

About a week ago, I attended Hack4Baruch’s first programming workshop. The goal of this workshop was to let everyone, experienced or not, get a feel of what it feels like to code. The languages that they chose that day were HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Now, it all sounds like too much on one plate, but these three languages are the meat and potatoes of a modern website these days. Two of them aren’t even real programming languages!

Peter Zheng, our instructor put a website in the following analogy:

A website is like a building. HTML is the brick and mortar of the building, while CSS is the paint and decorations, and Javascript are the elevators, the electricity, the running water.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the full workshop, because of a work meeting. Yet, the workshop sparked my interest into web development and made me look for other resources I could use to teach myself at my own time. It’s a great skill to carry, and could score you some money when times get tough!