Why I’m done organizing hackathons

In my first year, I tried my hand at joining a development team and was rejected. My boyfriend was accepted and was involved in the team for a year. I’m glad I was rejected; the development work was not something I was interested in (At the time in my first year, I was trying to get any experience, and didn’t really care what experience it was) and my boyfriend was even less interested in it (but was the one who had to do it, unfortunately). Also, the whole aspect of group work is awful, because if no one’s doing it then shit doesn’t get done; I would often see my boyfriend doing most of the work. And in fact, to this day he’s still a top contributor on some project repositories even though he hasn’t touched the code base for more than a year.

And that led me to be more interested in the logistics of hackathons. I had a small moment after my first year; I missed chemistry and it was hard to see why I should have stayed in computer science because I was a slow learner (in high school, I was among the top students in my chemistry class and in my first-year chemistry classes I got A+, so I wasn’t used to struggling as I did in computer science classes) and the weird culture of computer science students thinking they were on the verge of something or that they were the future; no JavaScript and AI isn’t going to change the world as you would hope so. So I decided I’d rather be involved in encouraging more minorities to pursue computer science alongside another field, which is where I am today studying computer science, biochemistry, and chemistry.

Anyways, I then applied to join the operations team at StarHacks, putting marketing as my backup. I wanted to gain some experience before applying to the cmd-f logistics team at nwPlus. I was accepted, but for marketing to my dismay. Since this would be the first hackathon I’d be involved in, I said yes to the opportunity. And I’m glad I took the opportunity and I did so much more than marketing. I loved everything about the role at StarHacks; the group of minorities I helped inspire, the people I worked with, managing a Discord server, playing with Discord bots, and creating and researching new content to promote. But I hated marketing; monitoring social media accounts was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Unfortunately, that was my role on the team. I wanted to plan out workshops, pick inspirational speakers, and shape the way someone was introduced to computer science. I wanted to show that computer science was more than coding; it was the way computers can communicate with another computer, how the hardware and software communicate, how the individual could communicate with the software and trust that the software would communicate correctly with the hardware, theories of computer science and much more. Nothing to do with web development or HTML or for loops in Python, which is what every club or event seemed to be promoting. And how computer science could be integrated into other fields like public policy, healthcare, climate change, and more.

Despite my annoyances, I helped put on StarHacks I and II. I increased registration from 800 to 1200 (I to II) and our speakers for SH I and II were amazing. I was proud of the event I helped build, but I still wanted to be part of the planning team, instead of someone in marketing.

Since I was sure I had more hackathon experience, I applied for the logistics team at nwPlus. I did the interview and then was asked to interview for the marketing team instead. I was sad about not being able to get into logistics but I asked myself; was the role more important, or the overall impact you could have just being part of the club. I chose the latter and accepted the offer for marketing, but deep down I knew that the actual role was more important to me.

I’ve been asked "Why marketing?" and my response is something like: "I think marketing is essential because it allows a group/company to share their values with individuals and expose individuals to a product or event that could change their lives, who would have never known without the outreach". But I didn’t really get to do that. What marketing really was, was copy-pasting captions into Instagram, clicking posts, and then spamming other clubs to share your post. Absolutely mundane work.

Being the external eyes and look of something also means you interact with other groups trying to do the same thing as you. And it just feels so artificial now. Everyone wants you to share their opportunity. Everyone is making their iteration of the same idea. But why??? I don’t think most groups create events or opportunities with intention. Most workshops are copies of each other, and topics are generic, random, and poorly executed in some cases. Additionally, I hate the "girlification" of things like "girlboss", "stemist". Not only does it separate women further than their male peers, but what does "girlboss" or "stemnist" even mean? what do these words imply? There’s no word like "boyboss" or "stemboys" because it sounds ridiculous. This is why I cared much more about the role I would be involved in. I was essentially sometimes marketing events I wasn’t personally aligned with. And then comes the overworking.

Anyways, I also have a fear, or more like the feeling I need to give it my all. I believe that when I say something I better do it and I better do it as best as I can, and I get scared if I don’t do something then people will dislike me for it. This is probably what has crippled me the most. But not everyone feels that way. I believe that if I give as much care and work into something, others will too. But that’s so wrong, and a truth I need to learn. Sometimes if you’re lucky, a team does mirror your efforts. I think the StarHacks team does this. But that is rare and in most extracurriculars, it’s been me doing a lot of the work; either unasked of or because other team members simply didn’t. At nwPlus, I had to become the unofficial Director for a few weeks because the actual Marketing Director just didn’t do anything. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but my fear of being seen as lazy pushed me into doing the role of Director and eventually becoming a Co-Director, a role I just felt like I had to take because I’m scared of disappointing people.

This behavior probably came from school group work where I felt like I was forced to do everything, and that same mindset is also present in other group work scenarios. As a "gifted"^[1] student in a predominantly white school, teachers would ask me to help other students, put me in groups with underperforming students, and the like. This has resulted in me responding to every slack message no matter what else I was doing (workout, class, literally anything) spending hours doing something that wasn’t even assigned to me, pestering others to do their work, usually it was me doing it anyways. Every time I did the work that was supposed to be assigned to someone else, I would get apologies and thank yous. But were they sincere? If they were, then I wouldn’t always be the one picking up the slack. It wouldn’t be a common occurrence. What’s missing from that apology or thank you note is "sorry/thank you for doing my work, I thought my time was more important than yours and I trusted that you would just pick up all of my work.". When you continually let your work fall on others, that’s what you’re saying to them.

I, unfortunately, was giving too much of my time, and suffered mentally and physically; I eventually broke down after StarHacks II. I had just wasted two weekends glued to my laptop either marketing an event in real-time or moderating on Discord and Zoom. I faced abuse from some hackers and to add on I:

All of this could have been prevented, had I not been involved in extracurriculars that forced me to give up my time because I couldn’t depend on others.

Was I good at marketing? Who knows, I sure as hell don’t. Do I like marketing? Hell no. Then why I was still doing it?

This breakdown has caused me to reevaluate the way I spend my time and why I spend it that way. Why am I even in marketing at nwPlus if I disliked it so much? Why did I keep giving my time to others when I was flailing around myself? Why did I continue to help put on hackathons when I didn’t even like them myself?

I’m planning to leave all hackathon-related activities eventually. As to not disrupt the team (which happened to the marketing team at nwPlus, when our Director led our team to a pretty bad marketing run for HackCamp, and then left), I’m going to leave when the hackathon season ends. It’s not fair to others who are working hard and care about nwPlus for me to leave abruptly like a former teammate did, because there are some amazing and passionate people at nwPlus who have helped me so much when I was trying to take on the role of Director (and for that, thank you, y’all should know who you are). I’m writing this out to hold myself accountable.

I do still want to help people, but only how I want to. I like helping people in a way that benefits me too. There are two ways: - TAing - informal coffee chats

I’ve deleted slack off all my devices except my laptop. I only check within a certain time and then get back to work. I think more before signing up for volunteer roles; do I want to do this? And lastly, I’m taking more time for myself to learn freely by attending panels, reading random stuff, or just relaxing. I watch more animal YouTube videos nowadays or I just lay in bed thinking.