2014 has been a busy year for me. Now that I’m halfway done school, I really want to squeeze the most out of my next couple years.

I took a few very useful courses this last semester, possibly even more useful than I realized at first. Having recently done a few tech interviews, I’ve noticed that many questions feel almost like they were pulled straight out of courses I’ve taken here at U of T. I find that rather ironic, as students including myself often can’t see how certain facets of theoretical computer science taught in school are applicable to the industry.

Outside of classes, I like to stay productive and work on small little ideas that I think could be useful. To maximize productivity, I follow the golden rule of not sleeping until such idea has come to fruition. For this, overnight hackathons are perfect. I participated in several in these past months, including the Great Canadian Appathon, a 48-hour game-jam sponsored by the mobile gaming giant XMG Studios, and the Canadian Open Data Experience, another 48-hour hackathon promoting the use of freely available data released by the government. However, I’m most proud of my work at the C3 Hackathon in February, where I ended up making an <a href=”http://replayism.com/tactile/”>Android app for app designers</a> that remotely displays your currently open Photoshop file on your Android device, so you can see your app mockups on yo ur phone or tablet in real-time as you edit it on your computer.

This past month I’ve been working as an app developer at Interaxon, a venture-funded startup. It’s been a great experience, working in a very talented and close-knit team who believe in their product. To summarize my main findings: use git.