My Experience at TartanHacks

I’m Sai, a freshman at Carnegie Mellon University who loves building things with other people, and I’m writing about Tartan Hacks, CMU’s student-run hackathon where teams spend a weekend turning ideas into real prototypes. What makes it special aren’t just the final demos that every team presents, it is the feeling that everyone belongs together in the room, whether they have been coding for years or it is their first building experience.

TartanHacks is for anyone who has an idea and wants to bring it to life: programmers, designers, ideators and even first-timers who aren’t even sure what a hackathon is. Teams form around ideas, people share roles and you code fast. The best part of this coding is learning from your teammates. Just watching them code, setting up the environment and asking questions is the best way to learn from a hackathon. The weekend is packed with momentum: brainstorming sessions, meeting with recruiters and sponsors, the feeling of building and testing and the joy when your code runs as you wanted. 

My favorite part of TartanHacks is definitely seeing the range of projects that students built when given a theme, deadline and an opportunity. I’ve seen teams build a face-tracking productivity app, a local election ballot guide  and many other amazing ideas. Even when a team says their app is “just a prototype,” the student experience is real: people leave with real skills, a strong network and proof that they can build something amazing that they're passionate about, even under pressure.

In the end, TartanHacks matters because it is an amazing opportunity to turn an abstract idea into a real, working project, while learning alongside other students who are just as passionate about building. You don’t just talk about innovation at CMU, you experience it first-hand through collaboration, problem-solving and collaboration on a meaningful project in a short amount of time. Whether you come in with a lot of experience or none at all, everyone is supportive and welcoming, making it very simple to step out of your comfort zone. TartanHacks truly captures CMU’s creative and collaborative essence and shows how powerful it can be when students come together to innovate.