I feel like I have finally settled in and am extremely excited for the upcoming year. USC has so much to offer that it can be overwhelming at the start, but I have finally found the ways to “get involved” that work for me. I’ve settled into a number of core projects, and have found that I’m always doing work that’s meaningful to me. Spark SC is the student organization that I am on the founding/executive team of, and where many of these projects stem from.

Spark SC is an umbrella organization that unites the creative and entrepreneurial community on campus under a single name. This unity gives us influence on campus and the ability to throw large-scale events, collaborate, and develop a connection to the growing Los Angeles tech and entrepreneurship movement. We just held our first event, the “Meet – N – Mix”, which introduced new students to Spark SC and our 7 member organizations. The event was huge (300+ students) and the feedback was great, so it’s cool to know we are working on something people care about.

Meet – N – Mix Photos

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I’m really looking forward to the weekly Hack Nights that started last semester, and about the new direction we are taking this year –– we want to focus on helping new developers so that we can create a self-sustaining group of skilled coders on the USC campus. I’m also on the core team planning HackSC, USC’s large-scale hackathon, and it’s really cool to be involved in a single event that is going to affect so much of the Viterbi community. My other large-scale project is 1000 Pitches, which I run as one of my responsibilities for Spark SC. It is a two-month long pitch competition that allows every student to share their innovative ideas, and for ten of the participants to win a thousand dollars. I’m really fortunate to get to work on these projects and am amazed at how different this semester is going to be from my first semester.  This time last year I was on the club water polo team and exploring my interest in improv, and now I’m involved in student orgs and event planning –– things I would have promised you I had no interest in. Entrepreneurship seems to be the theme of this semester, and I’ll be sure to write more about entrepreneurship in Los Angeles and at USC soon!

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calvin-2016

calvin-2016

Computer Science, Class of 2017, Learn more on his profile here!