Page 83 of You Had Me at Hello World
But maybe that judge’s comment threw me off my flow, because now I’m second-guessing how good I’ll be at explaining this slide. God, I wish Khoi was here right now.
No. Iknowour project. I’ve spent weeks mucking elbow-deep in this code. I’ve debugged at three a.m., I’ve fine-tuned models for language translation, I’ve read research papers on performance optimizations, I’ve dreamed in SQL queries. I’m just as good as the dudebros here who don’t shower. No, better. Because I also shower.
And I can’t mess this up for Khoi, either. He deserves a shot at the top prize.
I dig into some of the technical difficulties and questions we considered while building. A few slides flash by, but to be honest, they’re not visually interesting—just snippets of code to explain our ideas.
Once I reach the end, one of the judges asks, “Great. Now here’s a question for you. Why do you think you deserve to win?”
I stare at him. My mind feels so blank. Truth is, I don’t know if we deserve to win. Our project is cool but all the other projects are amazing too. Well, maybe notallof them. I think that one guy who wants multiple girlfriends built a polyamorous version of Tinder.
Anyway, I’m not sure what makes us special. We don’t incorporate any groundbreaking technology, and we aren’t using blockchain or whatever the latest buzzword is. Our algorithm isn’t particularly sophisticated—just filtered searches with some basic recommendation logic. Most decent mobile programmers could make something similar.
But then I think about my mom, about the times she wished she had someone to ask about American school forms or credit card applications. About Lola’s mom struggling through health care paperwork in English. About all the families like ours, stumbling into vast, faceless systems that weren’t built for them.
“Hello World has the potential to be a lot more. If it were launched as an actual platform for immigrants, it could help so many people.”
Edvin Nilsen nods, like he totally buys into the vision. The actual judges seem confused.
“Did you raise venture capital already?” one of them asks. “Because if you did, that would be in violation of the competition rules.”
I blink. “Uh, no?”
“So are you planning on making this a real app?”
“Uh…” Khoi and I haven’t discussed that at all. That sounds like exactly the sort of conversation that would lead to talking about the FutureTM, which is, like, the problem in our relationship right now. “Maybe?”
I can tell from their expressions that this is the wrong answer. My heart plummets. Maybe I should’ve bullshitted about blockchain instead.
Did I just kill our chances at winning?
“Sounds good,” another judge says after a beat. “Well, this was a pleasure. Hope your teammate feels better soon.”
I might thank them. I’m not sure. My mind is all a jumble. And as I walk out of the room, my legs feel like lead.
After the presentation, my phone is all lit up with notifications. There’s a flurry of texts from Khoi, fresh out of MIT Medical, spamming apologies for missing the presentation. I’ve never seen someone use that many loudly crying emojis in a row.
My thumbs freeze over the blank text box as I try to figure out what to say. I want to check in about his health, but once we start a back-and-forth, he’s going to ask about how things went. And I don’t want to admit that I blew it.
But before I can type a word, he double texts that he’s going to hit the Walgreens pharmacy and then crash before the awards ceremony.
I go back to the dorm and start packing up. We have to check out tomorrow. Mom is nowhere to be found—who knows where she disappeared off to. I don’t put too many brain cells toward that. I’m too busy freaking out about, like, survival stuff.
So yeah. I flubbed the presentation and we’re not winning. No, maybe we still have a shot. We got first place on thesecond checkpoint and our test scores on the first checkpoint were decent. The final score is based on all three. But I’m not counting on that. That’s like buying a lottery ticket as your retirement plan.
What are Mom and I going to do?
When I was six, we stayed at a shelter for a little while. Not sure how we ended up there. It might’ve been around the time her boyfriend Zhao got deported and we had to move out of his apartment.
It’s been a decade, so my memories of the shelter are fuzzy. Besides the constant noise and occasional fights between grown-ass women, it was kinda fun. There were other kids around, so it was like a never-ending sleepover. We had these chaotic Wii bowling tournaments. But after, like, two weeks, Mom caught me playing with an empty syringe I found on the ground, and the next day we moved in with one of her grad school classmates.
I’m not six years old anymore, so maybe we can give a women’s shelter another shot.
I spend the next few hours packing our things and researching nearby options. There are eight shelters in the Boston area and I call up each one. But they’re all full. And the receptionist at Roxbury Sanctuary hears my surname and starts ranting about how “you people eat raw bats and bring disease everywhere.”
I resist the urge to tell her that I like my bats sautéed, thank you very much.
Anyway, so that’s a total bust. I guess we’re sleeping on thesidewalk tomorrow night. Maybe I should dig through the recycling to snag the comfiest piece of cardboard.
