TKS, Hackathons and High School

It's not even December and it's already cold... ❄️

Hi everyone :) Welcome to my 1st newsletter!

I’m Aryanna Gangani, a 13 y/o girl who’s excited to share the insane opportunities and events with you guys! I’m also keen on making an impact on the world, especially with a new technology I discovered - BCIs.

More about me:

🧠At the beginning of the year, I joined this beyond amazing program called The Knowledge Society, or TKS (more coming next) 

🎶My favourite hobby is music…like literally anything music. Listening to music, playing music and making music is my absolute fave thing to do

📚My favourite book definitely has to be ‘One of Us is Next’. I LOVE mysteries

The Knowledge Society

TKS is a unique program designed for young, determined minds wanting to make a positive and meaningful impact on the world with new and upcoming technologies…so me! 

In just the first two months, I’ve learned about how I can improve how I learn, and how to learn effectively more than I have learned in my entire middle school time - it’s crazy, I know. I’ve never been awesome at time management, but TKS is helping me build the habit of time-blocking and prioritising which time and time again have proved to be great tools for efficient time management. Basically, I’m learning life lessons that at 13 that some people don’t even learn when they’re adults 🤯.

🎙Learned how to effectively network

📄Learned how to write an impactful article

🎤Learned how to make a compelling presentation

Hackathon

This month, I participated in my first ever hackathon, with TKS! You and your group are given 3 hours, and are prompted to find a solution to an important problem using really cool technology. Like AI, Blockchain, BCIs, Nano tech, and AR/VR…but those are just to name a few of the amazing and up-and-rising technologies that humans have the ability to interact with. I didn’t get the opportunity to present to the panel of judges just yet, but I’m really looking forward to that opportunity :)

A few 🔑 takeaways:

-Have a Project Manager (PM) manage time, group action items and personal actions items. This is extremely important, because having someone take charge and lead the group to make sure that everything gets done in the little amount of time given has a huge impact on the quality of work the group produces

-Work with people that you know you can get it done with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome to work with your friends. Lucky for me, I got to work with both 🤗. But choosing people who can keep their end of the bargain can change the course of how well you do. 

-This is the most important: Make a prototype. Prototypes really show the judges how exactly your idea is going to work. Having a simple but detailed model of what your idea is important for the judges to see so they can assess how scalable it actually is.

Challenge

Halfway through this month, our challenge started. What was this challenge, you might ask. Every year, TKS partners up with huge companies (like CIBC and IKEA) so that TKS students can take a stab at solving real world problems. The winning idea that TKS students came up with actually got funded, and the company is currently working to put it into stores. So far, it’s got $45M in funding. CRAZY, right??? For the challenge, my group is working with the leading company for retail sales revenue, Walmart!

My team and I are working on finding a simple way to improve the customer journey. We’re only about halfway through the project, but I’ve already learned so much about retail. It’s unbelievable how much effort and money companies put into attracting more customers to their business. The challenge ends on December 9th, and I’m so excited to let you guys know the results in my next newsletter 😄.

Velocity

This month at TKS, I joined an extra program called Velocity. Pretty cool name, right? Well, it’s main goal is to help the members become more deadline focused. I’m held accountable for goals I set for myself the week before, and if I don’t finish them, I’m kicked out. Usually, you’d think getting kicked out is a bad thing, but alumni emphasise on the fact that if you don’t get kicked out of velocity at least once, you’re doing it wrong. The whole point is to show you that everybody has deliverables that need to be completed, and if they’re not, there are consequences.

Focus

At TKS, near the beginning of the year, the students are tasked with finding an up-and-coming technology that they would be passionate about researching more about. 

I chose to do my Focus on Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs)!

I’ve always been curious about the capabilities of our brains, and this is the perfect way to delve more into the specifics of that. For those of you who are not really sure what BCIs are, they’re basically a technology that uses brain or nervous system data to control computers or machines. If you want to learn more about them, check out the article I wrote about them!

I’m now at the Replicate stage. Basically, I have to find an interesting project that uses BCIs and, you guessed it, replicate it. After I’m done re-creating it, I have to write an article, make a video and make a website on how I did it, and how the process went. Now, I’ve still got a LONG way to go. But something that I’m really looking forward to is getting a free Muse headband, which I can play around with and use for this project!

So that’s it with TKS this month.

But hold on, I’m not done yet 😏.

High school applications

We all saw this one coming…

You see, this is another whole story. High school apps practically took up half my month. I had to fill in applications, write about my interests, and prepare interview questions. Not to mention I had to take the SSAT this month, the Secondary School Admission Test. All-in-all, I’d say this took up about 100 hours of constant work. Close to the end of this month, I actually had an interview for a school called De La Salle. This “interview” straight-up felt like a genuine convo. The admissions woman working there was really sweet, and I got the vibe that she genuinely just wanted to get to know me, and not know how I can memorise a 1000 word essay I wrote the night before. It’s an amazing school, and it’s definitely VERY disciplined, but I have some other options as well, I’m just waiting for the results to come out :)

🎯What’s Next?

1. Writing more articles

More about BCIs, and how they have a huge impact in the field of prosthetics.

2. Making a BCI project, and learning more about them

Stay tuned for my video, article and website if you’re interested to learn about my progress!

3. Continuing with Velocity

As you can probably tell, Velocity has already been a life-changing experience in my life so far, and the lessons I learn from it are seriously impactful

4. Consuming more content

I’ve seen some amazing book recommendations, and I have to read them! My fishing net is being cast out for some new articles, papers and especially books.

---

Jeez, November happened extremely fast! I can’t believe we only have 3 more weeks of school left…phew. Anyways, thanks so much for reading my newsletter, and I’m so excited I get to share my wild experiences with you! Looking forward to some holiday shopping, and also looking forward to spending more money 😉!