Written by Alyssa.

This January marks two years since I attended Square’s College Code Camp. Looking back, the most valuable aspect of Code Camp for me was the community we built. My fellow campers were intelligent, passionate, and opinionated, and their interests spanned from computer science to being a mom to interning at NASA. It was refreshing to be around people that reminded me of myself; to be around people who I aspired to be like; and to be around people I could inspire as well.

Code Camp created a safe space where we could talk about anything on our mind, like imposter syndrome which many Code Campers wrote about. (Our lunches were far from small talk.) One of my favorite conversations centered around everyone’s thoughts on wearing dresses to a conference. After a long discussion, we decided you should wear one if you want to, even if you feel that you’ll stand out. To celebrate this decision, we all wore a dress on the final day of camp.

To this day, I keep in touch with the fellow participants from my cohort. I run into them at meetups, hackathons, and conferences, and I make an effort to reach out when I’m in someone’s hometown. We’ve created a network of amazing women engineers, and I’m grateful to be a part of it. I hope many more can join as well. With that, I’m happy to announce that Code Camp applications are opening today.

We invite college students to apply to our five-day College Code Camp at square.com/code-camp. The program takes place January 4–9 in San Francisco and includes leadership sessions, coding workshops, and a hackathon to bring together women engineering students and build a stronger community around women in technology. Alyssa Software Engineer at Square. Leads Square's Women in Engineering group, nicknamed WomEng.medium.com Square Code Camp Alumnae stories and experiencesmedium.com

By Square Engineering
@SquareEngMedium