Last month I had the opportunity to attend a Y Combinator hackathon. I was pretty excited as this was my first time visiting San Francisco and California in general. The timing was pretty awful though, despite it being on a weekend, I thought it would be cool to stay an extra day (Monday) and thus skipped a MATH 135 quiz. When I landed in SF I also got notified of an interview at PlayStation which was scheduled for the day after I landed back in Toronto, which also happened to be the day of a MATH 137 quiz. I was extremely busy in SF and completely forgot to study for my PlayStation interview (I didn't get the offer) and also forgot to study for my MATH 137 quiz (I did really bad). I also had very little sleep; in hindsight it was really stupid of me but I decided not to sleep while waiting for the plane, on the plane, and obviously didn't sleep during the hackathon (shoutout Celsius for keeping me awake).
It was all definitely worth it though. Everyone in SF was smart and it was cool to see so many likeminded people in one spot (the hackathon food was also great, shoutout Sumac). I built AlphaHedge, an AI-powered investment research platform. This was one of my first times playing around with AI and concepts like RAG, so it was pretty fun. I even got to ride a Waymo!
My teammates and I didn't win anything (sadly), but it was a great experience nonetheless. I got to meet and chat with people with much more experience than me. I think my teammate and I were one of the only first year university students there, there were lots of people with several years of full-time experience at FAANG+/Fortune 500 tech companies as well as people doing their master's. It was incredibly helpful to get insights on the industry and tips on how to navigate university from several people who had already been in the same position I was.
SF as a city was also beautiful:
I definitely see myself coming back some day, either for internships or for other events like this!