Outside the classroom
A hackathon project, and a couple of things I do outside of engineering that shape how I work.
Built with a small team over a hackathon, using FastAPI, Next.js, Go, and PostgreSQL split across the four of us. Scrapers collect live listing data, and a pricing engine runs the math on it to flag underpriced cars across Toronto and the GTA.
The idea came out of a team brainstorm at the hackathon; we were throwing out everyday markets with hidden inefficiencies, and used car pricing stood out because the markup is real but invisible unless you're willing to do the math across dozens of listings by hand, which is exactly the kind of problem software is good at automating.
Transferable skills
Building Undercut under hackathon time pressure meant splitting FastAPI, Next.js, Go, and PostgreSQL across teammates, so the frontend, the scraping pipeline, and the pricing engine all had to agree on the same API contract before any of us could work independently. The communication work was writing that contract down clearly enough that teammates on a different layer didn't have to stop and ask me to explain mine. That's the kind of cross-team technical communication I'll need as a software engineer: explaining a decision to people who don't share your technical context, fast enough that it doesn't become the bottleneck.
Beyond
Outside engineering
Endurance cycling
I ride 100 km plus routes regularly, which is less about the bike and more about pacing myself through a task with no shortcuts. You can't sprint a century ride any more than you can rush a technical report the night before it's due.
Transfers to: sustained effort on long-horizon work A century ride is won in the first hour, by not going out too hard. The discipline is holding a sustainable pace when you feel capable of more. That is the same judgment that kept the technical report on a schedule of drafting, peer review, and revision instead of one long night, and it is why I now budget review time into a deliverable rather than treating it as slack at the end.
Sports cinematography
I shoot and edit sports footage on the side, which is its own audience problem: the same clip needs a completely different cut depending on whether it's a highlight reel for the athlete or a recap for a general audience.
Transfers to: framing one message for different viewers The athlete's cut lingers on technique and keeps the mistakes in, because they're watching to improve; the general-audience cut keeps the result and cuts everything that needs context to enjoy. Deciding what to leave out based on who is watching is the identical decision I made writing the two Assignment 3 handouts, and the one I make now before any technical write-up.