In high school, I'd never opened a single computer science course brochure, and now I will be an incoming graduate student in machine learning. QHacks gave me a taster of what tech really was - a creative endeavour with technical tools as the paint brush, and societal-level solution pitching as the frame.

Events such as QHacks have allowed me to delve into topics without fear. I used to find it time consuming and intimidating to learn enough to feel confident about a topic, but now I can tackle it head on. It has been just under a year since my first hackathon, and I can say that it has changed my life for the best, and I look forward to participating in many more!

QHacks 2021 gave me the opportunity to showcase my problem-solving and creativity in a 'team; setting while working on the Parallel Fourier Computing project. The hackathon is also filled with great networking and knowledge building sessions which make this 36-hour event a deeply enriching and valuable experience.

QHacks was an exciting environment to learn and code in, and I really enjoyed the challenge. The sponsors were really cool and the event was a lot of fun!