Once Again a Freshman

Written by Waseem Ahmad. Posted in Blog

Almost 4 years ago, I packed all of my belongings in my car and showed up to Rice University in Houston not knowing a soul over here. College life sounded very exciting to me from the time I started reading Harry Potter among other books. Little did I know that I would find Rice just as magical as Harry found Hogwarts!

I read How to Win at College by Cal Newport during freshman year which has 75 chapters each of which focuses on a habit or approach on how to make the best of your time at college. Today I went through the list and I’m glad to say that I did almost everything on that list.

I have grown so much intellectually and professionally. I found a discipline that I grew to love and become very passionate about. I had the chance to form new legacies at Rice through my leadership with the Rice Computer Science Club.

But what I really cherish is the lifelong friendships that I’ve made and the amazing memories that I’ve formed during my time at Rice. Thank you everyone who has made me into who I am today. I feel forever indebted to Rice and part of its community. I hope to actively engage as an alum and remain in touch.

In full circle, I have packed all of my belongings in my car and I’m about to drive away from Houston. In this new chapter that is the rest of my life, I am now a freshman again.

DIY: Hackathon

Written by Waseem Ahmad. Posted in Blog, Computer Science

HackRice 2014Hackathons are becoming incredibly popular all across the world. One of my fellow hackers from Princeton recently went as far as Abu Dabhi to attend NYU’s hackathon. Major League Hacking was formed last year to track and support the organization and participation of student-led hackathons. Two years ago, I organized HackRice — our first hackathon at Rice University with the help of the CS Club. We had about 50 participants at this hackathon with 12 demos and 2 professors as judges. The hackathon was quite successful and we got an overall positive feedback.

Instead of giving direct advice on how to organize a hackathon, below is our story of organizing HackRice 2014. I hope you’ll find tidbits of implicit advice and learn from the mistakes we made.

Read the rest of this post on Medium.