Application Spotlight: Dlet
I'm beyond grateful to have been a hackNY Fellow last year, and I want to help others on their journey to joining this incredible program! When I applied, I found that the most valuable advice was to focus on honesty, creativity, and authenticity. This application isn’t about checking all the boxes to be the “perfect” candidate; it's about capturing your personality and showcasing what makes you unique. I know my application wasn’t perfect, but I made sure it was a true reflection of myself and my values, and I think hackNY’s commitment to recruitment like this is what has made it such a successful program over the years.
Tell us about a coding project or a developer community project you’ve built that you are most proud of:
This project is a website for my UT Dallas chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). The website serves as a landing page that displays our organizations events, goals, board, and other important information that students interested in joining might want to know about.
The development approach we took was a relatively straightforward one as we wanted to create a simple and smooth experience for our members, both in a user and development sense. I used Node.js for the server-side operations and embedded javascript files for our front-end pages as it allowed us to create simple and effective interfaces. While the project was hands-on all over from myself and my partner, the main problem I faced in the front-end where I had to deliver exactly what the other board members wanted . There was a lot of feedback from our organization leaders as to what they wanted to see and it was hard to balance everyones desires and successfully implement everything needed.
One case in particular was the large slide show of pictures from our events that the home page has. This feature was unanimously desired by the board. This was my first battle with the trickery of front-end design. What I figured to be a very simple addition turned out to disfigure the entire home page. I struggled with this for a while and researched and asked around my friends if they had any solutions. After about a week of on and off researching I had finally found the solution, which turned out to be something I had not heard of before (as these things usually are). Through my research and help from the people around me I was finally able to overcome this little hiccup in development of the website.
Why did you build this project? What about it matters to you?
This project was a necessity for my NSBE chapter at UT Dallas. The chapter was abandoned in 2019 during covid and once I got to UT Dallas in 2020 I joined NSBE and committed myself to growing this organization into what it is today, an organization that has grown from 20 members to over 150 active members at our campus. The website has served as a focal point of our organization since its inception and means so much to me because I have enabled our chapter to improve campus involvement, corporate outreach, and overall operations of the club.
Why apply to hackNY specifically?
I am applying to hackNY because I understand it to be both a wonderful experience in both life and career growth. It has always been a dream of mine to live in New York City, and I already plan to move there after I graduate. This opportunity will give me the chance to gracefully transition into that next chapter of my life, while also providing me with a group of like minded individuals who I can look forward to learning and growing with as well. I also feel as though working closely with people on similar schedules and goals will make the summer projects very successful, challenging, and of course fun.
Tell us about societal issues that you'd like to solve, why they matter to you, and what you've done to address them․
Education is something that I've always personally held viewed as the cornerstone of success. Bridging the gaps in education access whether that may be through income, location, or any other setbacks, will be something that I hope to be able to work towards in this hackNY experience, but furthermore something I look forward to contributing to in life. This past semester I have organized and hosted a robotics camp for underprivileged kids in the Dallas area that myself and some peers at UT Dallas have used to grow access to STEM resources and exposing educational opportunities to those that might not have known them before. I hope to be able to work toward education accessibility with this opportunity through hackNY!
You are on a casual stroll to your favourite café when you suddenly notice your treasured fictional character, whom you decide to invite for brunch. Paint the scene for us: tell us who the character is, why you invited them, what you would discuss, etc. Frame your response to give us a genuine depiction of who you are and what values you hold dear.
So I am on a casual stroll and look who I bump into, Theo Decker, from the book, The Goldfinch, one of my all time favorites. Theo is a troubled young man who after a traumatizing early life, finds his place in the world as an antiques trader/restorer. While I would thorough enjoy speaking to Theo strictly about the ins and outs of an antique shop, or the way in which he restores furniture, I would invite him to lunch to simply pick at his brain and understand his world views. As mentioned, Theo had a very troubling and unique adolescence, which has shaped him into a rather complex man. Theo has a very strange relationship with his prized painting, The Goldfinch. It is essentially the only thing he cares about in the world. I always wondered throughout reading this story how one could become so fixated on a piece of art, to the extent that it might consume their whole life. Understanding his perspective on art and life in that regard would be the majority of the conversation that we have, not because I particularly disagree, but simply because I don't understand it, and understanding how people and things work has always been something I've been motivated by. What does he feel that I don't understand when he sees his painting? Or maybe it is not the painting itself that means so much to him, but rather the means in which he acquired it? Our conversation would be calm and inquisitive, and I would probably talk a great deal less than he does, but still it would be a great conversation nonetheless filled with insights, laughter, and storytelling.
