From my last post dated 10/08/2026, I had just began preparing for what turned out to be my first “real” Hackathon. Don’t let those quotations fool you - I’m using the term real literally here but the quotations I’m using as a qualifier to indicate that the other hackathons I’ve competed in were hackathons but not in the traditional sense. This hackathon was an in-person, 3 day-intensive style hackathon with over one thousand participants and over 700 projects submitted. It was the ninth edition of KnightHacks, an annual UCF student-led hackathon, fully-equipped with workshops, a career fair (where the three most noted companies were Nvidia, AMD, and AWS), multiple tracks/challenges directly from companies such as NextEra Energy, BNY, and OneEthos. The Best Overall Grand Prize was…. drum roll please…. a FULL-RIDE scholarship to Full Sail University… I know you’re probably thinking the weirdo school of central FL that costs too much and is super specific…. but if you still believe that I encourage to check out their new programs - I think Full Sail is on the brink of becoming a niche-powerhouse in AI.

I now have to update the skills section in resume to include Computer Vision, Claude, and AI/ML - specifically supervised learning!

I tried for two company tracks and should have just stuck with one.