As a male without $6000 in savings.
Hacker School is awesome, so if you enjoy coding, you should apply, but what really prompted me to write this post is that someone on Reddit or HN said giving grants only to woman is unfair to men who need it.
While I do think it’d be good to have more gender balance in programming, giving grants based on need only to woman seemed unfair to me too. After three months of Hacker School, there are 2 things that altered my opinion on the matter.
First-hand stories of all the crazy little subtle male culture bias. There is no way I can second-hand this to male readers, but let me say there is a lot more to it than just getting the job and getting promotion.
“Affirmative action.” Discrimination is a big part of American culture. If you think giving grants to woman is discriminative to man, you would be completely right.
But it’s okay, because woman are a minority. Affirmative action is a very normal and accepted thing over here, and it’s just that, discrimination in favor of the minority.
I still managed to make it
New York is both more expensive and cheaper than you can possibly imagine.
If I would have rented a decent room and ate out like everyone else, I would not have been able to do this from my savings. But the thing is, you don’t have to do all that.
The first thing to do is to contact all your relatives in and around New York. I’m basically staying here for free in exchange for some help with AERO on my free days. I do have a long commute, but I have a Kindle and a Gameboy with Pokemon.
My friend Six has taken an alternative route, and is just crashing on couches and roofs, with Couchsurfing as a backup. With a lot alumni living in the city, and a dangling fire escape here and there1, this is perfectly doable. However, it might be less pleasant in the Fall batch.
A good lunch can easily cost you $10, but it doesn’t have to. You can buy bread, there is a fridge, microwave and hot plate2, use them. Me and Six had a lot of cheap and delicious meals that way.
I hope that helps.
