A whirlwind of projects/commitments/finals basically ate up my December, but the appetite must have been well-satiated because 2016 went out in style. What follows is the culmination of my year in pictures.
"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud" -Maya Angelou
Hiking with the mom.
Celebrating a friend's birthday with a very fancy English tea.
Apparently, putting cream in a fruit tea is an act of tea-vesty.
Watching The Nutcracker + playing Tchaikovsky in quartet.
Girls Who Code club still going strong. The girls are currently working on their final projects.
The best way to end finals is a Korean potluck with friends and then a SMASH battle.
WOOOH Davies Symphony Hall!! Spot the Bass Clarinet!!!
A playbill juxtaposed with my busy calendar (post-its of to-dos not featured)
My brother and I ~Young at Heart~
I have also been working on hosting a hackathon for high school girls in about two months, so be sure to visit www.femhacks.me.
A lot of effort has been put into the month of December, but the hard work was worth it. 2016 may have been a rough year for the world, but 2017 is a chance for a fresh start. (so be sure to not mess up this time around!)
Weekend #1: November 11-12
Along with some friends from school as well as the Pivotal Girls Who Code program, I attended my first overnight hackathon at Gunn High School! It was an interesting experience to say the least, being surrounded by so many other computer geeks. Our team coded a web application that allows the user to chat with a punny farm animal (click the link to try), and we were pleasantly surprised to have it win an award for best domain name. Unfortunately, we still have no idea how to clear the database of chat logs, so we hold no responsibility over what anonymous users post there. The following list contains some things I learned that weekend.
1. Stickers to hackers is like catnip to felines. Seriously.
WOWW SO MANY STICKERS!
2. How to learn cybersecurity skills through Major League Hacking's partnership with Watchdog 2 to create a virtual Capture the Flag challenge. (Tip: find the hidden html files)
3. Soylent is an acquired taste. Apparently, drinking three bottles is equivalent to a full day's nutritional needs, but my friend and fellow hacker described it as a very milky yakult.
4. The range of ideas that high school hackers can come up with is incredible! Projects included a Bernie Sanders RPG game, virtual reality simulations, credit card scanners for grocery shopping, and reddit re-post detectors. Instead of feeling intimidated, everyone was extremely helpful and fun to work with.
5. Pulling an all-nighter is extremely difficult. As I was walking around outside at 4AM trying to stay awake, I noticed other students either passed out in their sleeping bags or in a state of "wouldn't notice if a zombie apocalypse happened in the next five minutes."
Our hackathon team's lovely faces after not sleeping for 24 hours.
6. We felt pretty nervous pitching our project, as it wasn't especially technical or life-saving, put when people understood the light-hearted nature of our goal in making people happy by laughing at animal puns, it was a cool moment B)
GunnHacks we are coming back next year!
Weekend #2: November 19
This weekend, our female STEM club members participated in the Young Women's Engineering Symposium, hosted at Notre Dame High School in San Jose. I learned about this event from the Janksters (an all-girls robotics team from Notre Dame) during Calgames, so I was eager to see how it would turn out.
I personally attended three workshops, for Software, Aerospace, and Electrical engineering. Each workshop included a woman in the field speaking about her experiences as an engineer and the projects she worked on. All of the presentations were extremely engaging, especially the bit about Ms. Albuz building a 7,000 piece Lego autonomous car in college. Unfortunately, it seems as if I have another conundrum, as now I want to be an artificial intelligence programming electrician who is an astronaut in outer space. Just kidding, but nonetheless, all the fields were intriguing.
The wonderful speakers who shared their knowledge of industry with us.
The amount of robotics girls there was more than I have ever seen, which was gratifying. At the same time, if it is the same group of girls attending all the robotics competitions and engineering events, maybe it is time to spread beyond our group.
Bonus Day: November 23
WOW I just watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them with my mom in theaters (like any super cool sixteen year old), and I absolutely loved it. I had a ton of fun watching Mr. Scamader and Ms. Goldstein scramble around New York trying to retrieve all the magical creatures of my childhood. On a side note, did Credence really die...?
The American people took to the polls on Tuesday, November 8, and their votes have cumulated in the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, with the conclusion of a historically tumultuous election segueing into a reconstruction of the political establishment.
Aside from voting for the next commander in chief, Americans also had to decide which candidates were to fill the empty seats in Congress. Thirty-four positions in the Senate were up for election, more than half of which were won by Republicans, giving the GOP a majority over the Democrats. Californians elected Attorney General Kamala Harris as senator, who ran on a strong platform of pro immigration and affordable college. In the other half of Congress, the House of Representatives, Republicans maintained their house majority easily, securing 239 Republican delegates to 193 Democrats (3 seats still are undecided). Democratic incumbent Jackie Speier won the position for California’s 14th Congressional District, of which San Mateo County resides.
As for the gubernatorial elections, three of the twelve participating states flipped from Democratic governors to Republican ones. Missouri, New Hampshire, and Vermont all switched from blue to red, and the current map shows the GOP controlling thirty-three of the state governorships.
While the United States government is looking decidedly Republican, the trend in local ballot measures shows states leaning left. Voters considered issues such as the legalization of marijuana, gun restrictions, health care, and the death penalty when voting on how these specific issues will be addressed in their own state. Three states, California, Massachusetts, and Nevada, voted to legalize recreational marijuana, while fours others approved it for medical purposes. Voters also decided on a range of other transformative issues, such as the approved right to self-administer life-ending medication in Colorado, a ranked voting system in Maine, and a raise in minimum wage to twelve dollars an hour in four states.
Across California, voters had to decide on seventeen propositions. The passage of Prop. 51 allocates $9 billion in bonds to construct new schools and community colleges, while approval on Prop. 52 will take the money private hospitals pay to the state for Medi-Cal matching funds. Other approved propositions range from raising taxes on tobacco products and wealthy Californians, to ensuring legislative transparency by requiring any bill being voted upon by the legislature to be present on the Internet for at least seventy-two hours. Californians failed to ban the death penalty, but successfully passed Prop. 63, which aimed to curb gun violence by requiring background checks for ammunition sales and banning the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines. In addition, in response to the increasing diversity of California’s population, the approval of Prop. 58 reinstates multilingual education courses, which were banned by a 1998 law that required English-only classes in public schools.
San Mateo County also had its own range of measures and seats up for election, mostly along the themes of rent stabilization, sales tax, and school district bonds. Specifically to the Bay Area, the passing of Measure RR authorizes $3.5 billion in bonds for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to rebuild and modernize its crowded and old transit system.
On closer inspection of California’s voter turnout by precinct and county, it is clear that the densely populated coast is the Democratic force that outweighs Republican sentiments further inland in California. Accordingly, propositions that our state passed are not all in agreement with the remaining country’s views.
Consequently, the Bay Area is a liberal bubble that often shelters Mills students from the views of the rest of America. While the presidential election outcome may have surprised and upset many, the democratic process carried out its purpose for all aspects of government and legislation and served as a wake up call for the American people.
CalGames: a congregation of 36 schools in one gym to battle it out for the strongest robot -all in the spirit of gracious professionalism and gratuitous sponsorship bragging. CalGames in three syllables: AHH - MAY - ZING!!!
In a very stressful two days of my life, I experienced the emotions of elation, gut-wrenching shock, panic, and sweet sweet validation. In those two days of competition, I worked side by side with my teammates in strategizing alliances, rebuilding broken robots, and bringing back a name to the Mills Robotics Team. In those two days, our underdog robotics team jumped out of the "good enough" attitude that previously landed us 63/64th place into a position where we were proud to wear our MRT t-shirts.
"Wow it works!" -MRT Team 253
Day 1
We arrive at Fremont High School ready to compete, albeit concerned about how our team would fare with a bottom ranking robot. We hastily replaced some supporting churros on the frame, ensured our switched out drive train could move, triple checked all the electronic wiring, and fixed the autonomous code right before the first qualification match. And the result of match 1: a success! Success: a completely foreign concept to our robotics team. Even more shocking: a win in which our robot crossed defenses, shot goals, and did what it was actually built for (unlike our original tread contraption that flat out died on the field). Still, we kept our hopes low, mainly crossing our fingers to not be next to last by the end of competition. However, now we had enough of a teaser, a tiny spark of "what if?", that encouraged us to look pass our failures from last season and focus on the present challenges.
And I believe that a significant portion of robotics is mindset. Of course, mentorships from NASA engineers or sponsorship deals from Apple, Google, and Qualcomm can be an enormous help to teams (they also provide great griping material for us when we get jealous of custom spray painted chassis). However, our team proved that those things were not required in order to have a successful competition. Instead, it took a lot of hard work and even some luck (if you believe in it) for our team to bring our unassuming robot into the playoffs.
After each match it was a battle to save our injured robot, as it was no easy task to cross obstacles and avoid other fast-moving machines. Similar to paramedics rushing to the ER, we would wheel the robot on a dolly back to our pit to assess the damage. In one particularly rough match, a metal bar completely caved inwards and had to be removed. In another round, we had a wire get disconnected (in which I clumsily crimped my finger when trying to put it back in place). Like a doctor checking on her patient's heartbeat, the multimeter was invaluable in discovering if the voltage was too low. By the end of the night, we were somehow in third place, much to our wonder.
Day 2
On our second day, we were determined not to slip out of our position for playoffs. Reaching the next level was starting to seem possible, although we were afraid of crashing from too high of a hope. To ease the rising tensions, CalGames held various dance breaks, although the playlist was questionable (think PAPP and the Hamsterdance). We had our amazing driver operating the robot and things were going swell until the last match. In qualification match 46, we were allied with the two lowest ranking teams against three other decent teams. And we lost. Badly. This dropped us out of the top 8 and took away our chance to select teams for the playoffs, although there was still a good chance someone would choose our team for their alliance. It was hard not to feel mad about the other two teams dropping us from second place to ninth. It was hard not to blame them for getting stuck and not scoring any points for the entire match. However, we couldn't get mad at those teams since we were the ones in their position last year. We were the bottom team that no one wanted since we would only drag them down. So, we simply accepted our position and hoped to be chosen for the playoffs.
Cross the rough terrain!
Tangent
On a side note, there were two all-girls teams that I seriously wished I could be a part of. One was a girl scout troop and the other was from an all-girls high school in San Jose. On the first day, Mimi saved me from being the only girl on our team, but the next day it was only me. Even though two years of working with the guys prevented me from feeling like the "token female", I still felt wistful about being on an all-girl team that ultimately won the competition (and wore matching hair bows to boot). Despite this, I had to accept that working with guys will translate into interactions in the real workforce, so I decided to make the most out of a co-ed (ish) team. Besides, I found it hilarious to thwart their well-meant attempts at chivalry. In one especially amusing moment, four guys offered to carry the 12 volt battery I was holding, in which I responded, "Sure, if you really feel that it takes four people to hold one battery." :D
peace
Playoffs
So there we stood, fallen from the top 8 and waiting at 14th place to be chosen for playoffs. 7 other teams were chosen; our fingers remain crossed. And then we heard the invitation. And even better, we heard our team captain say "Team 253 graciously accepts." Elation at making playoffs for the first time in recent team history lasted about 15 seconds. And then the reality set in that we had to ready our robot (on the 8th seed alliance) against the 1st seed alliance. But we were past panic -after all we made this far, and we had two other good teams on our side.
Quarterfinals!
Quarter Finals: Rounds 1-3
Faced against top scoring teams, our alliance made the decision to put our robot on the defense. So out came some PVC and duct tape, and in five minutes, we had a defensive robot to block high shots from the opposing team. And thanks to our skilled driver, our robot blocked all the high shots attempted by the scoring machine on the opposite side. Nonetheless we lost the first round 75-87. For the second round, our alliance had to win or else the other team would advance to the semi finals. Almost as if it was miracle, the other team's high shooter did not work and our team won in a 105-65 point match. So it was all up to the final round to determine who would enter the semifinals. We began strong, with the scores almost even, but suddenly our robot lost communication and could not be driven. With our hearts sinking, our robot sat on the field like a hunk of metal until the very last seconds of the match, in which it was too late to recover. Our allies did the best they could and we lost the match only by a margin of 8 points. Although we were disappointed to let our allies down, they graciously thanked us for working with them. It turns out, we were the only victory from a lower seeded alliance during playoffs.
With that, our time at CalGames and the quarterfinals concluded. MRT made it much further than we had ever expected, and we left with high hopes for the future (in addition to the ice cream that our captain promised us).
Crazy proud of this team <3
It turned out to be possible to make MRT great again, and things are beginning to look up. Almost as if our team is beginning to take flight...like this teaser for the next competition...
Today the STEM Club went on an adventure to UC Berkeley! I was initially paranoid about losing one of the underclassmen on the BART train, but luckily catastrophe was avoided. However, riding through Oakland did provide some interesting entertainment including an acrobatic routine done to hip hop on the train car home.
The Berkeley campus was quite beautiful today, which made me rethink my reservations about attending (assuming that I can even get in :P ) Our group signed up for a mechanical engineering workshop hosted by the Pioneers in Engineering association, in which Berkeley students welcomed us into the one of the many Engineering buildings on campus, and introduced the basics of prototyping and construction.
Aside from learning techniques for power drilling and hack sawing, we were humorously lectured on the important of the "Engineering Notebook." As emphasized by our enthusiastic college mentor, the "Engineering Notebook" is akin to a diary, the holy grail of intellectual property. We were to design our bridge under strict protocol, crossing out any white space and signing and dating each page with a witness. Although I doubt our balsa wood and wood screw creations would warrant an patent lawsuits, the gesture was sweet.
This bridge held 21 pounds and only weighed 8 ounces!
The student mentors were keen on the "building bridges" metaphor, and made sure that the workshop exposed us all to the field of engineering and its many applications. Although I had previous experience working with power tools, I had a fun time learning about bridge structures and trusses. In addition, the taste of college life was pretty satisfying. I definitely should pack a hammock to college.
In an unexpected turn of events, I saw my friend who graduated Mills last year and currently attends Berkeley. He looked a little disappointed at being rejected from a bunch of elite clubs, confirming my fear of the competitive nature of the campus, but college life seemed to be treating him well. The shocking thing was how his Intro to CS class had 1700 students!
At the end of the day, I'm glad that the club members had a fun time at Berkeley. I will continue to hope that no one gets lost on the way, and try to have faith in my limited responsibility skills.
Yesterday I attended my second Hackathon, which was hosted by the San Francisco tech company Mulesoft. In contrast to my very first hackathon, which was populated by rather unwashed college students, the Mulesoft Coding Cup was only for high school and middle school girls, making it a much more comfortable environment for beginners.
For those of you who are unclear on what a Hackathon is, the Google describes it as " an event typically lasting several days, in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming." While that statement is not false, I feel like this picture is an adequate description of a hackathon as well.
Hacking is a full body and mind sport.
As I entered the warehouse-esque office in the heart of downtown SF, I felt bubbles of anticipation rising within me. I was going to hack! Soon we settled down into our teams and got to work, with Macs and PCs littering the floor as girls got into serious conversations discussing which API best fit their program.
Connecting with the other hackers and mentors was almost as fun as the hacking itself. These were talented girls coming in with a mission to code, yet the stereotypical vision of nerds with glasses was missing (except for me, of course). However, the undercurrent of competition made it very clear that these coders were in it to win it. As we got to work on App Inventor, a quick survey of the room would yield an image of girls of all shapes, sizes, and colors, not just hunched over a computer screen typing away, but also laughing and discussing with each other the pros and cons of the newest IOS software update. In other words, it was a geek haven.
Seeing a T-Rex with Oculus Rift was quite the experience. Jurassic Park, anyone?
Aside from an ample supply of snacks and code, the hackathon also presented us with various professionals to give talks on the technology industry. I was in awe as I witnessed Ellen Spertus, the creator of App Inventor and a Computer Science professor at Mills College, explain how code is an enabler that transforms us from consumers to producers.
In which I try to subtly try to capture an image of Ellen.
In another talk, Maren Lau, the CMO of Internet Media Services, Skype-called in from Buenos Aires to discuss the prominence of technology in our lives. While there were a number of female full-stack programmers, I could not help but notice how many "representatives" of the female gender in the technology industry were in fields such as marketing and public relations.
Coincidentally, I was reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, that weekend. In her story, she brought up the point how women were expected to drop their careers in order to raise a family. On my very own hackathon team, there was a girl whose mother used to be a software engineer for Sony. However, when she left to have a child, her job was taken by someone else. Now, the mother works for marketing, no longer a programmer.
I went into the hackathon expecting to have a good time and learn something new. However, I came out of it wondering about my own career and how I should approach it. While it was important for me to go out and have new experiences and challenges, I also learned that it was a mission for each one of us leaving the Hackathon to spread belief in the potential of other girls to do whatever they want, regardless of societal expectation. As evident through all the creative projects that teams came up with in a short span of coding, I have a strong belief that that message will get through.
The CatCoders!!!
All in all, I had a great time being flopped across bean bag chair while furiously racing against the clock to finish the code in time for the integration of a Twitter API into a gaming connector. Actually, the coding bit was quite stressful, but ultimately rewarding once we finished! Swag bags also made the whole trip worth it :)
Welcome to my blog! It's content will be a mixture a funny occurrences in and out of school, cool events I attended, and reflections on human nature from a sixteen year old perspective. Perhaps there will be a sprinkling of K-drama reviews and well-meant rants as well. Enjoy!
~Kaitlyn
Past-times including stalking neighborhood cats. Serious paparazzi.
