I’ll post something in a bit!

This year has completely changed how I think of myself, while writing this I took some time to self reflect this year.

At the start of this year I started my own Hack Club with Freddie, our club has grown since the start of the year, we started with our group of friends (some of which even I didn’t even know), then fast forward to now, nearer the end of this year word spread and more people joined us.

Everything changed when the month of March came around, firstly because it was my birthday and secondly, we had seen the program Vibes, using AI to aid you in making a website, now within the Hack Club community the opinions of the program varied, some thought (and still do) think that the program encourages Vibecoding for clubs. Moving past this view, we decided to start a workshop, now apart from one of our members causing a “safeguarding” concern according to School AI, the club loved taking part and they are some of the funniest sites we’ve made as a club.

In this same month I get a message from Jared Senesac, the Clubs Operations Lead at Hack Club asking me if I wanted to help run Vibes, now I had never ran a YSWS (You Ship, We Ship) like this and it’s still something I do to this day. I love running Vibes as it gives me a chance see how other people’s imagination comes together to create their dream site with the help of AI.

By April I was asked if I wanted to run a program called Flavorless as well, Flavorless is a program about making websites without CSS, if you don’t know CSS is what makes websites look the way they do, so things like background colour all come from CSS, now this program completely eliminates it, you make a website with HTML and JavaScript to make well… some tasteless sites. Vibes has a special place in my heart for being one of the first actual programs I’ve ran, Flavorless is the same but for being the second.

Finally reflecting on the end of April I get another message from Jared welcoming me to the very big scary channel of the clubs team. Ironically it took me ages to realise I was now a clubs team member.

That kinda summarises how my relevance in Hack Club changed over the course of this year, making me realise I could do it, I had done it, writing this had made me realise I can do whatever I put my mind to, from working with my club to becoming a Clubs Team member.

Academically too, this year was also the year I picked my GCSEs for year 10 and 11, in my head I still think it’s years away. I realise now time moves quicker then I think it does next it feels like not long ago I was a year 7 starting high school but now being in year 9 going into my GCSE studies in a few short weeks does raise my anxiety levels a bit. I know that I have people I can talk to and ask for help when I need it but I need to recognise and ask for support when I really need it.

I also met some of my best friends this year too. Hi Safia, she probably predicted she would be on this list, but I met Safia for the first time at a in person Hack Club event called Daydream, she was probably the first person I met from Hack Club too, in March this year I met her again at an event called Campfire. Alfie that mic is mine by the way.

Also to the person who I won’t name but he’ll know who he is, thank you for helping me with my writing and always helping me to change a somewhat put together sentence into one that looks a lot better. Also to all of my teachers this year who have helped me with the subjects I struggle with, helped me understand things I didn’t understand and helped me improve my test scores this year, thank you (even though I know non of them will read this.)

Finally, to the person reading this and to the person I’m showing this to I want you to remember even when the world is hard always remember good things are coming and someone, somewhere believes in you.

If you want to call this an essay then go ahead but ironically what makes this different from anything I’ve written like this for a while, I haven’t asked AI to check this, I didn’t ask for anyone’s opinion, it was just me and my thoughts. With Apple Music soundtracking me while I was writing this at 1:13 am.

Be you,

William Kitch