This past Saturday holds a special place in my heart. Not only because it was my first Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day experience, but also because I was given a great opportunity that would have been foolish to pass up.
In high school, I was inducted into an organization focused on increasing women’s interest in the STEM field called the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). As a member of NCWIT, I was offered the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. this past Saturday to attend a workshop hosted by Apple. Apple and its prestigious engineers and computer scientists were generous enough to facilitate a program that taught budding developers how to create an iOS app using Swift, a programming language Apple created in 2014.
When I was offered the opportunity to go, I was ecstatic, and I knew that this would be a great opportunity for me. Although the four-hour drive down wasn’t my favorite part considering the workshop started at 8 a.m., it was still a great learning experience. During the program, we learned the basics of Swift and created a working app by the end of the session at 5 p.m.
As soon as the workshop was over, I drove back up to Hoboken for the pre-Saint Patrick’s Day festivities. Although I caught the tail end of everything, it was definitely a sight that I had never seen before. Everyone was dressed in green (of course) and stumbling through the streets. I even saw a guy passed out and curled up around a tree on one of the side streets. Needless to say, I told the police, but at the same time, I had a hard time believing that other people would just walk by the guy without doing anything.
I was always taught to help someone out in any way you can, no matter how small or large the contribution is. It’s always best to look out for one another and to look out for your best interests that will contribute towards your future. This very same principle was definitely something that I took into account when deciding between going to Washington, D.C. or staying in Hoboken on Saturday.
I can definitely say that I made the right choice while also getting the best of both worlds by experiencing the remainder of the festivities later that night. I guess you can have your cake and eat it too.
