David Wasilewski is a student in MSU’s College of Engineering
Growing up, I always liked computers and even got yelled at a bit by my parents for playing too many video games. That's a pretty common trend for people my age. I had a good computer science teacher in high school for some AP computer science classes, which helped me see computers as a viable career path.
When looking at potential colleges, I saw environments where students competed against each other at other schools. While that motivates some people, I much prefer the style where I'm working with people in my classes, and everyone wants to help each other. I chose to come to MSU because the community feel here is much more collaborative. We work together for a common goal instead of competing against each other all the time.
At MSU, I have had the opportunity to make friends and build collaborations, which have helped me in my degree program and have proven to be an advantage when competing in SpartaHack.
SpartaHack is a 24-hour event in which you and your team create an app or idea that fits into one of the prize categories, such as sustainability or productivity. You can work with up to three people, and you do your best to build the entire app in 24 hours.
The great thing is that the organizers take care of everything for you during the event. Everything you need is within the building. They have a food room with snacks and drinks. There is a place to sleep if you need it. There is good Wi-Fi. Everything you need is taken care of, so you have uninterrupted time to focus and work on whatever you want. The winners of the different categories can win sponsored prizes, and sometimes the prize money can be as high as $2,500 for the team.
Some teams pick a category that interests them or that they are passionate about, but my team always comes up with an idea first. Then, we see how we can apply it to the categories. It's up to you who you want to work with. I elected to work with the same people each year.
My favorite part of SpartaHack is the people with whom I've worked. I have enjoyed getting to know my team and learning their strengths. Now, we work well together because we know each other's skills. This has given us an advantage in the competition's second, third, and fourth years. For the last couple of years, we have been so excited about our ideas that we've kept working on them after SpartaHack, which is highly encouraged.
Right now, I am interested in the entrepreneurial side of the tech industry. During SpartaHack, I worked with my team to develop an app to redesign the MSU Bus Routes. Our goal was to redesign the bus routes to fit everyone's needs by randomly generating 50,000 student schedules. Then, I had to come up with an elevator pitch to explain the app's value and how we would implement our idea to the judges, which was exciting for me.
Participating in SpartaHack has given me real-world pitching experience, a motivation to bring my ideas to fruition, and inspiration to continue on my career path to running my own business.