November🍁

Hiiiiii everyone!!! I hope you are doing absolutely fantabulous right now. If you are one of my lovely subscribers and received this in your inbox, thank you so much! Love ya. ❤️

And if you’re new here, welcome! My name is Sasha Przybylski, and I live in Ontario Canada. I’m a 14 year old part of a global innovation program called TKS (which I love btw) But anyways, I like learning, running, and reading.

So yeah, welcome to my November! I hope yours was every bit as stupendous as mine. 😊

Hackathon

Okkk so first order of business: update you guys on the hackathon. This was SO INSANELY FUNNN!!! 🤩I honestly didn’t know what to expect going in, but it was absolutely incredible. Shoutout again to my AMAZING team: Jens Thomsen, Juan Vera, Omar Alweheshy, and Santiago Garcia. You guys were awesome to work with and I hope we can collaborate again.

I also should tell you what the hackathon was, because I have not explained that well. Basically, we got a “problem statement” and had to make a 1 min elevator pitch and a slide deck with our solution. And did I mention we had like 36 hours?!?!

Anyways, we were a SUPER efficient team, starting Friday morning, (it was due Saturday at 1pm, and we got the problem statement on Thursday night…☠️) and not getting anything solid until Friday evening.

That’s lesson #1 - no procrastinating.

We had a 5 hour brainstorm session, and then basically worked straight right until the deadline. We were doing deep research on gamifying education, and then compiling that into a short 1-minute elevator pitch script, and then creating our deck and final presentation. Our final idea was to use cardboard VR headsets to help engage students in class more, which would help to reduce high school dropouts.

Lesson #2 - you need to be efficient and effective with your brainstorming. The idea determines if your entire project is going to be any good.

To be completely honest, we were working so hard and moving so quickly it’s kinda a blur. 😭However, I do know that I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

If you’re interested, here’s the link to our presentation deck: V-Lum

We didn’t do as well as we had hoped, but I think we still learned a lot and had fun. Here’s a picture of our team, looking very relieved after we finally submitted our deck and could relax. 😅

Lesson #3 - team dynamic is everything. If you like working with your team, you’re going to have a heck of a lot more fun. And we had a very diverse set of skills, which worked very well.

→ Juan was our professional graphic designer, Jens had done a hackathon and was awesome with the feedback, Omar’s an all-around genius, and Santiago was our amazing project manager.

Challenge

Now that the Hackathon is done, our TKS directors have something else up their sleeve! (can’t be letting us get bored y’know🤣.) So, now we are starting a 4 week challenge! My group consists of Jens Thomsen, Claire Ma, Shani Glassberg, and Adam. A stacked team if I do say so myself!

The way the challenge works is that there are three companies you can choose from: IKEA, CIBC, and Walmart. Our team chose CIBC. There is a problem statement (similar to the hackathon) and you need to make a stand-alone slide deck with your solution.

→Stand-alone means we won’t be presenting unless we qualify, they are just going to read it over and see if they like it.

Basically, we are company consultants! (At least I’m pretending we are, even though we really aren’t😅) “We are working alongside CIBC to reimagine the future of banking.” 👍Official role.

The all-telling problem statement: “How can CIBC re-imagine what the future of banking looks like by 2030 to attract and retain GenZ customers?”

The coolest thing about this is that the executives can choose to implement our ideas if they like them! 🤯The deck is due on December 9th, so I’ll let you know the results in the next newsletter!!! :)

TKS

Anyways, TKS has been super packed and exciting. Here is an article I wrote about the sub-2-hour marathon here. It’s a little on the longer side as a heads-up, but I’m happy with how it turned out. This actually took me an embarrassingly long time to write, but that is a-ok! Room for improvement. 😎

And of course I didn’t forget about the Learn Article!

→ A learn article is an article about the topic of your focus, which is the topic that you want to become more proficient in during TKS. Some examples of focuses are AI, gene editing, longevity, etc. My focus is Material Science. The point of a learn article is to write about a specific area within your focus and teach people about it. 😊

So if you are interested, here it is! Nanomaterial Applications for Cancer

Running

Moving onto a very exciting portion of my month: I was able to start running again. (btw all you newcomers: I had 2 stress fractures in my medial tibia, or shin, and have been off running for longer than I would have liked). But I was cleared to start again, and it was lovely! Of course I’ve lost a bit of fitness, and we’re starting slow, (15-20 minute increments) but PROGRESS!!!💪

And before anyone asks “isn’t the cross-country season over?” Yes, it technically is. But all that means to me is that it’s track season!🤣 Anyways, my team and I are still training, which is very good in my opinion.

A photo of us at practice. We have a lot of fun. 🥳

Reading

Onto the books I’ve read this month!!! A lot of you may have already read these, but if not, I would definitely recommend you do.

📕7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

This book was FANTASTIC!!! It lays the 7 habits out in such an easy-to-understand way, and everything in there is so true (in my opinion at least). I’ve begun to apply some of the principles to my own life and I must say they are helping so much. Here’s a quick breakdown of the 7 Habits:

1. Be Proactive

2. Begin With the End in Mind

3. Put First Things First

4. Think Win-Win

5. Seek First to be Understood, Then to Understand

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen the Saw

📕The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma

This book is another fantastic one, it discusses how owning your morning can make a huge difference. I know for me, I am most productive in the morning, and the things discussed in the book are seeming to help me level up. Key takeaways for the perfect morning routine:

• Wake up at 5am, and get right out of bed when your alarm goes. No being lazy💪

• 5 - 6am is the Golden Hour

• From 5 to 5:20 am, exercise! It’s important to get your blood flowing and get your heart rate up

• 5:20 - 5:40 is supposed to be reflecting, so journaling, planning and such are recommended

• 5:40 - 6:00 is for growing. This can be reading, listening to podcasts, etc.

Another key thing is that it’s your morning. Your life. You live it how you want to. For me, I’ve applied some things from this book, but other things I like my way better. Do what works for you, but don’t knock it til you try it.

Quote

This month, it was a little harder coming up with a quote. After some reflection, here’s what I got for you:

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” - Lance Armstrong

This quote really sums up why you absolutely cannot quit. Keep going all of you. 🌠💪

Goals

Upcoming in the next newsletter:

• Hopefully more running (aka I gotta be smart about how I build back up, doing strength and recovery work)

• Figure out what I want to do for my Apply and start it

  → Apply is the second stage of the focus process, basically I will be doing an experiment or simulation, going deeper into my focus on material science

  (a focus within TKS is where you pick the technology that you want to learn more about and go deeper in)

• Challenge results😎

• Skiing⛷️❄️

Summary

So that’s a wrap for November! Hopefully you found that interesting, because it was pretty interesting to me! Hackathon, starting a CIBC “consulting” project, and running!👟 Upcoming are some absolutely top tier photos of running, and my Apply. And of course, the Challenge results. 😊

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you have an extraordinarily wonderful day, week, and month ahead! 🤩