It has been an amazing experience being part of the BDPA HSCC team. When I first started pursuing a spot in being part of the HSCC team, I never realized how much BDPA would have changed my life. I had great experiences from the trip to the Museum of Modern Arts to the 2008 BDPA National Conference held in Atlanta GA. BDPA accomplished its mission in exposing students like me to Information Technology. Through the many trips that we took part in, I have developed a deep interest in Information Technology and have decided to pursue it in college.
Training for the competition has been both hard and fun. At first, it was intense seeing how we were still learning and there was a lot of competitiveness between us. However, as the competition nears, we each realized that we were strong in one major area of programming. We were closer than any other teams. Unlike most of the other teams, we were from the same school. Additionally, our trainer was also our teacher as well as our friend. It is best to train and learn when you know the people whom you train with well. We appreciate our trainer because we would have never come this far if it was not for him. He sacrificed many of his time in order to prepare us for the competition. For example, he sacrificed his birthday just to be with us during our second regional competition in Maryland. The regional competitions had a big influence on our performance in the national competition. It was a great way to get us accustomed to the way of the competition and at the same time, we had a lot of fun.