Self-Development: it’s not just all about you!
Don’t just pursue your passions individually, use them to create a community and inspire others
I feel like everyone is on this rat-race to get into a university that we often get sidetracked and forget what is most important: our self-development. Now, by self-development I don’t mean just improving yourself in Programming, Art, or whatever it is you are passionate about, you need to also uplift and successfully inspire others. Doing this is no easy feat, and definitely needs grit, perseverance, and hard work.
You may be wondering, who is this insane person with no qualifications whatsoever and what does she know about successfully inspiring others??? Being a high schooler, I do not have a college degree yet, and am definitely not qualified to talk about getting into college. However, I do know a thing or two about grit and perseverance when creating an event.
It all started 3–4 years ago when I first got really interested in Programming after learning Python. I did everything I could to learn more: researching, taking online courses, watching YouTube tutorials. However, I felt like something was missing. Although I’d done all this so-called “self-development”, I didn’t feel like I’d developed as a person. It was as if all this researching was, in a sense, useless without others to share it with.
Researching did actually lead me to find out about this amazing concept: people work together in groups to create a solution to a problem, but they don’t just create their solution, they are also able to attend workshops to learn more. This mind-blowing concept was a Hackathon. However, I only found 1 Hackathon in Singapore: the NUS Hack & Roll, which I wasn’t able to attend because I found out about it 1 month after! Therefore, I decided to start my own Hackathon to give everyone else more opportunities to take part in!
Now, I had everything lined up. We would have an in-person hackathon May 2020. I had a location, I had some sponsors, I got a website. And then…COVID-19 happened. All in-person events were cancelled, and the only way to have the hackathon was online. So, we went digital. However, I only had 2 months to prepare and create a totally new event. A ginormous hackathon didn’t work out, I didn’t have enough participants, there were some issues with legalities and overall, it wasn’t well thought out. Instead, I created an intraschool hackathon, and it did quite well considering. However, if I’m being honest, whilst running the event, I was thinking to myself: ‘Should I give up after this? This must be some sort of sign from the universe, right?’
Well, it was a sign from the universe. After snooping through the projects created by all the participants, and I was inspired. I had to make my hackathon a reality. I could imagine all the amazing projects and this community, where all the participants could give each other advice and have fun together. It was a competition, yet, it was really all about learning and meeting like-minded people.
It did become a reality, I founded HackWise, a free, digital programming competition in which participants must work together in groups to create a solution to a Sustainable Development Goal. We were sponsored by a bunch of companies, like Amazon, Samsung, Crimson Logic to name a few and we had over 90 participants from all around the world. With the rest of the HackWise team, we successfully created this community I had been dreaming of. Competing teams were helping each other when they were having trouble with their codes. We even had an awesome Among Us game during the Judging period, where everyone had a chance to relax and meet new people.
What made organizing this hackathon different from my previous attempts? Well, there were a few things that I learned:
- Firstly, I had a team who just as passionate about creating this community. It can be hard to find people who are willing to join your cause and actually do the work, and at first, it was hard. Initially, my teammates didn’t meet deadlines, they wouldn’t reply to my texts for days, and they made so many excuses. They just didn’t put in the work. I thought it was them. But really it was me. I wasn’t selling an idea they could believe in and that they were passionate about. Therefore, I changed everything up. I created a task board, and it wasn’t one of those boring to-do lists. It was a comprehensive step-by-step of what we need to do, and THE most important part was: it included the end-goal. The end-goal was so clear to me, but it wasn’t to them, so I made it in such a way that they could visualize it!
- Secondly, I had perseverance and an open-mind. Creating a community and something like this takes grit. You will likely have your idea shot down multiple times, and it is your goal to not let it bring you down. DO NOT GIVE UP! I applied for HackWise to become an MLH hackathon (Major League Hacking) — it’s the NFL of the hackathon world. They rejected me and said I did not have the experience and my hackathon was not at the same level as their other events. I didn’t stop after that rejection, I continued. But this is where the ‘open-mind’ comes in. When you get a rejection, there is likely a reason. So do listen to the rejection, ask why, and improve on that aspect. I attended other MLH hackathon events, probably 3 or 4 of them to see what they were doing right and to get more experience to improve the event.
- Lastly, I cannot stress this enough: you need to be passionate about what you are doing and believe in your vision. The perseverance, the passionate team, the community will not happen if you don’t have passion. I know that many people have probably said this, but it’s true.
You may be wondering, if I don’t have a passion, how do I find one? Well, the one piece of advice I can give you is: try, try and TRY. Seize every opportunity you get to try something new. Join clubs that seem remotely interesting to you, join any and all events under the sun, and research! Most importantly, when you find something that interests you, something that you enjoy doing, look for ways to create a community around it and get more people interested in what you love.
I hope you enjoyed that article and learned something from it! This was originally a speech I wrote for a TEDx event at my school. Sadly, I was not chosen to speak. However, I really believed in the message and therefore decided to post the article to Medium!
Until next time,
Monique Cheng
