Dear Steph of 3 months ago
Dear Steph,
The next 3 months of your life are going to be your best by far. At first, you’ll dislike New York City because it smells, the trains always have delays, the food and beer are so expensive, and there is virtually no outdoor climbing.
But you’re not going there for climbing anyway. You’re going there to become a better programmer. And you will. Even better: you’ll become a better person while you’re at it too. Spoiler: You will be climbing! And you’ll sprain your ankle from slacklining, of all things (it could at least have been an epic 5.12 or something!). But you have good friends like Max and Jesse who’ll give you a piggyback ride to get you back to the space.
You’ll also become good friends with the amazing Susan who’ll patiently pair program with you even when you’re being lazy and tired. You’ll meet Crista Lopes who will inspire you to just sit down and study the fundamentals of CS. Then there’s Suren, the fastest coder you’ll meet to date, cooks the best potato curry, generally just a nice guy to talk to, and who, according to Susan’s mother, wants to buy the world (haha). Connor’s also quite a character–such an intelligent guy who’ll teach you the way of the derpehrmahgerd.
credits to Crista Lopes
You’ll watch horror movies with Alice, Eunsong, Victor, and Jesse. Eunsong will be writing code to sync the subtitles to the movie because none of us know how to sync it with VLC, so be prepared to be awake for a while. Oh, you’ll be ice skating with them too and it’s going to be so much fun.
Trust me when I say that attending Hacker School is one of the best decisions you’ll make in your life. It will give you so much. If not for the energy and the programming, then at the very least for the people.
Don’t think your stay in New York ends here. You’ve got to come back to these amazing people and this amazing space called Hacker School.
Climb on (and I soooo wish you did your PT properly, you lazy nut)!
P.S.
To Nick, Dave, Sonali, Rachel and all the facilitators: this past three months have been some of the best I’ve ever had. I made friends that I never thought I would get along with and code I never thought that I would write. Thank you for bringing all of this amazing people into a space together and supporting every single one of us.