dedicated to 3kh0, Lou, Neon, Bunnyguy, Angad, Leo, Rachel, Deven, Jared and every other single summer intern, gap year and full-time employee I met. Even though I might have annoyed you, thank you.
This took me like, 5 months to write, because I kept getting emotional lol 😭

It's the 5th of May, 2025. I'm at my school, doing nothing in the robotics room, and I get a DM from @jps. He asks, "How do you consider yourself as a coder?"

I wast honest, "my knowledge still needs to be polished up, but yeah, I know how to code." (Proceeds to also send a video of the robotics room because of a few hardware projects I've made.)

Jared then proceeded to respond:
"No worries. That is a great room, but I'm more interested in whether or not you'll be able to be productive if you came to intern here at HQ this summer."

Excuse me, what. Intern? At Hack Club? This dumb kid, interning?
Yes, I was chosen to be an intern. From all of the people that Jared could choose, he chose me. To this day, this all still seems like kinda of a shock to me, I haven't fully processed it 😭...

From then on, honestly, nothing too interesting happened, except just getting ready to go to Burlington, VT, like:

• getting insurance taken care of
• getting my flights booked
• getting my ESTA
• preparing mentally (really hard)
• and getting my HCB account up!

Delta was also such a emotional roller-coaster:

• they told me i couldn't book my flight
• proceeded booked my flight correctly?
• put in the wrong name and email???
• and BOOKED THE WRONG FLIGHTS???

Okay, let's fast track until the 17th of June, three days before I travel to Burlington, VT. I got this message from Jared:
"Mel was checking your account. Looks like you have $74 in it from those transfers. Will that be enough money for you for your first week?"
I said:
"I don't really know to be honest, but probably?"
I WAS WRONG. I was poor on the first day, holy. 0/10 would not recommend 😭

On the 14th of June, I recorded a voice memo just, talking about all my fears, and my thoughts. I was already getting scared. Here's the transcript:

I've never felt this scared before. 
Uh, it's be me, away for a month, from June 20th through July 26th. And I'm not going to be able to see my parents during that time. [...]
I'm going to be honest, I've never felt this way before. 
I'm scared of having like anxiety attacks while I'm there. That's when I have sometimes and even though I haven't still been able to get used to it, I'll probably be able to while I'm there. I don't know yet. 
I guess we'll slowly find out by, I don't know, living there, I guess.
[...]

But yeah, I really don't know how to feel.

18th of June. Basically two days left. My letter of invitation for customs is all wrong, so I was waiting on Deven to change it. Jared also says, "I have one package here for you."

19th of June, nothing interesting happened.
Nervous as fuck. I was extremely nervous.
Started overthinking a lot more, to be honest.
What if I had panic attacks, normal when I'm away from home, frequent mental breakdowns?
Honestly, not the best experience. I started getting really scared, to be completely honest here. I considered cancelling everything, but I knew it was too late.

It's 20th of June. I thought I just had blinked but no, I'm on my way to the airport now.

The moment we park, Flighty sends me a message. Flight delayed until 1:30pm. God I wish I was joking... But nope, it's 7:34am and my flight is absolutely delayed.

Fine, I'll go check-in I guess...

Delta's check-in system was just, absolutely awesome clearly! Only took me one hour to check-in 💀...
But hey, let's think about it from the positive side, thank you EU! I got my 13.34EUR of free food :3 (and then, a few months after, my 600EUR of compensation)

I went to Burger King to have breakfast. Idk why. The breakfast was good though, cheese and ham toast + latte + orange juice. I was still obsessed with Compal de Laranja during this time lmfao

After this, it was just a lot of waiting.
I got a little envelope after checking in that made me feel like a convict to be honest 😭, it had every single detail about me. Full name, Reservation number, age, clothing, hair color and my whole itinerary and seats. I sadly no longer have this envelope.

The clock struck [insert time here, lowk forgot...] and I was with two people accompanying me. Went through security and straight to Passport Control (no breaks). Perks of being a UAM, you get the Crew line ✌️
Quickly, I was at my gate, sat down in a little corner behind the desk. I proceeded to get screened for the third time, which is fun! Don't worry, there's been worse (my United flight to DC after this, in September). I spent about 1h there, yapping with Leo on iMessage (fun fact, my messages with them is my primary source of info here lol). There was a person watching Reels at full volume there AAAAAAAAAA

Moments later, people were discussing if I either board first or last 😭. I was the last one to board the bus, but the first one to board the plane. And there I was. It's happening. Holy shit.

I handed my envelope to the Cabin Crew. Sat down in my seat. I got briefed by Cabin Crew, again, first time flying on a transatlantic flight and as a UMNR/UAM.
(fun fact: your new name is UM/UAM when you flight as a unacompannied minor. It's also your VIP pass, more context regarding that soon)

And slowly, I was taking off. LIS->JFK. First leg. 8 hours.

And honestly, the whole flight was just me nervous but so excited. Hack Club basically changed my whole life.

And we've landed at JFK. Went straight through border control, didn't get questioned surprisingly.

And I walked to the main terminal, where the person accompanying me took me to Delta's assistance desk. I thought, hm, this shouldn't be normal. I'm normally taken straight to the security line and then to the gate.

Little would I know, I GOT ABANDONED AT THE ASSISTANCE DESK 😭😭😭...
The guy just, dropped me off at the desk and went away? Like, people were screaming at him to get back here to take me to my other gate/lounge 💀.
So they had to find a new person to take me to the gate/lounge. It was a wait to say the least, but hey, I had a 4 hour connection, I was fine.

They found me another person, and we started walking to security! TSA is a little, chaotic.
When I was walking with them, someone at TSA told me "Hey you're not allowed in there!", and me and the other person said "UM" and they just said "Okay." (is this like the security access card what)

After walking for a while, I was finally dropped off at the Delta Sky Zone. It's basically a lounge for UAMs.

I spent sometime here just playing around! Charged my stuff, prepared myself, and yeah! Then, someone knocked at my door. It's time. We basically, ran to my gate 😭 (they were a tiny bit late...)

And there we were, waiting for a little bit to take off. Sat down, got briefed yet again and prepared to take off. This plane was toasty to say the least. They told me the APU was broken so uh, no A/C till the flight took off! Hey, but at least I got some Biscoff!

It was the shortest flight of my life, to be completely honest. We just took off and landed shortly after. No Delta Wi-Fi, sadly :(

I landed at BTV, where then I waited for the Cabin Crew to finish cleaning up the plane and then to take me to see Rachel (the Summer Interns coordinator) and Echo!

And holy shit! I was here! Burlington, VT. It's my first time in the US first of all, completely alone. I have some videos of me arriving, that one day, if I get the courage, I'll open them up and watch them. Leo was still awake, even though it was 3AM (BST) for them. I have a very funny video of Echo telling Leo to go sleep lmfao

Then it was simply the drive to the dorms. During this drive, I found out that Echo was going to be my roommate! Huzzah! Moments later, Champlain College, here we are. Champlain's campus is very nice btw, I really liked it!

I unpacked everything, and headed to Augie's room, where Dev (Deven) was playing horror games. I will just say this: Dev, you need to lock in. We also got some Domino's Pizza. It was very yummy!

And there I was. Day Zero, complete. We're in Vermont.

21st of June, 2025.

It's 5am. I had just woken up because of jet lag, which is something I did find up enjoying. I didn't have to rush, just relax. I ordered some Starbucks for breakfast, didn't end up walking that day.

When I woke up at those times, I just sat down in the upstairs lounge, looking out at the view.

At about 10:13am, Dev took me and Echo to Trader Joe's and Chipotle, which was really nice. At Trader Joe's I got a big jug of Orange Juice (which I never ended up finishing) and some gummies. Yummy :3. Also, it was an awesome #out-of-context farm (if you know what I mean 😭)

After that, I ended up walking with Evan, Echo and bunnyguy to the Downtown Transit Center to get our discounts (1$/ride instead of 2$/ride) and to catch the bus to HQ. While we were waiting to get our discounts, bunnyguy came up with the intern's channel name, #sumsum. It also became an inside joke, no meaning.

We went ahead and got the bus to HQ.
We ended up getting a stop earlier, which was my fault, I have to admit... But first, we went to Tracy House, where we met up with Ethan and he came with us to HQ.

There we were, Falls Rd and HQ. So much random stuff, but I can't show the inside, sorry!

After that we just ended up sitting on the couch and yapping together about shit, nothing special, just random stuff. Here's a picture of the HQ basement:

We got the bus back to the dorms, and sat back down in the upstairs lounge, just yapping about running random stuff (which we never ended up running).

For group dinner, we went to American Flatbread, Damn I miss that food, it was really nice, expensive asf tho.

At night, Rachel invited me and Echo to go to BTV to pick up another intern, Kate. We got ice cream on the way, huzzah!

And that's how Day 1 finished :)

22nd of June, 2025.

Wake up at 6am, and at 7am try to figure out how the laundry machine worked. The laundry machines ended up being a fun thing, more about this later.

At 9, I walked to the Starbucks! Got my usual, it was nice! Walked back to the dorms, and at around 11am, I went to Staples, to get the Summer Intern posters printed, made by @Felix Gao and to buy the putty to hang them up.

I hung them all around HQ with the help of other interns. At 2pm, I went to HQ to get some work done. It's my last experience of empty HQ.

Went back to the dorms. Day ended up, weird, with some ranting. Stuff that I shouldn't have said in front of Echo, for reasons I shall not disclose here... (nothing bad, don't worry)

23rd of June, 2025.

First work day! Rachel brought us all breakfast, I got some granola bars and a croissant. They were good. We then headed to the bus stop to catch the bus to HQ.

Me and Echo were in THE WAR ROOM! working. That was my little corner for work for about the first week. We were kicked out of the work room, and went to work in the stairs, since there was no more desk space. Zach accidentally dropped some stickers down the stairs, and ended up telling us to keep it. Summer of Making 2025 stickers!

The rest of my day was shipping some mail out to leaders and working on other stuff.

Headed back to the dorms and got this random picture:

24th of June, 2025.

Day started off with shipping out more mail for leaders with the help of @bunnyguy and Kate.

I also picked up my shiny HCB card, I had my first team sync too!

The day, ended a tiny bit disgusting... I got to the dorms, nothing happened, until I went downstairs, and the ceiling was leaking, and the toilet upstairs was clogged. Welp, that's a nice ending!

25th of June, 2025.

Yet another day of work! I went to Tracy to work this time, because Jared was there.

The day started off weird to say the least, we caught a bat that was hiding in Tracy's fireplace.

The rest of the day was basically more work and a bit of checking in the toilet situation, let's just say... it wasn't good 💀... ceiling was uh, not looking good!

26th of June, 2025.

More work, but later in the evening, we were invited to Champlain's auditorium to speak with students from the Governor's Institute of Vermont! Check it out, that's me speaking!

It was also, very funny to say the least... Especially during Echo's speech, where just a slideshow with the word saying "Fraud" made everyone scream of happiness. Peak.

And that's also how my day ended! Huzzah :D

1st of July, 2025

We took the group photo! That was nice :)

Zach also Jaywalked Shelburne Road, which if you know how it is... It's busy. Very busy. DO NOT JAYWALK SHELBURNE ROAD.

5th of July, 2025

I went to Petra Cliffs to do some rock climbing with a few other fellas. Uh. The trip, was an experience... I met a silly cat there tho! And my Uber back home, THE CAR BROKE DOWN. That was an experience.

19th of July, 2025

Wake up, and GO TO BOSTON! We, me, Lou and Echo got the Greyhound very early to get there at around 7am. We went to a random coffee shop, to wait for Neon who was also coming with us!

First activity of the day: F1 Arcade Boston, where I won :D (yes lou, i won. STOP DENYING IT.)

After that we got some yummy mexican food, it was acc really nice!

The next activity was an escape room at Escape The Room Boston, where uh. Let's just say, according to the statistics we obtained, it takes more than 4 Hack Clubbers to read a analog clock.

During this trip I also tried Celsius for the first time! It was very nice :3

The rest of the Boston Trip was mostly walking around! See some photos below :D

The return bit wasn't so good 😭... Someone found a mouse in our room, and that shit scared me so much that I decided to sleep in the lounge. The mouse was found in the lounge the next day...

25th of July, 2025.

It's my last work day. It was lowk sad to me, because well, I didn't know what was going to happen after that. How my life was going to be after everything. How things were back home. I felt, scared to say the least...

And the day before, I had also gotten the news that I cannot keep my money, so I'd need to spend it all before I went back. That was also very stressful to me, icl 😭

I ended up buying a Canon R50 with a kit lens. See a few photos from it here.

At night, we went to Crispy Burger, our favorite chicken place basically, because it was always open! We stayed there until like 1am, it was really nice!

26th of July, 2025.

This is where, everything ends I guess.

I got my last bagel at my favorite bagel place in Burlington with my friends, went back to the dorms, and finished packing up.

We yapped a lot, while we were just waiting. It hurts, to this day to be honest. Rachel called me, it's time to go to the airport.

Everything was such a mess to be honest 😭. I forgot my headphones, I wasn't aware of the UAM fee again, and I wasn't in such a good mood!

I got to my gate, boarded the plane, said my final goodbye to Rachel. When the flight took off, I started crying a shit ton. It was one of my worst mental breakdowns to this day. A member of the flight's Cabin Crew noticed, and they asked me if everything was okay. I just started ranting. Honestly, I don't know who they are, but if I knew who they were, I'd thank them a lot. I went to sleep, because crying does make you very tired. When we landed, I woke up.

I deboarded the plane and gave a hug to that cabin crew member. Next step was the plane home. Now, officially home.

27th of July, 2025.

I wake up. We're in Lisbon. I deboard my plane, and there was no one there for me! Huzzah! I had to wait about an hour, just for someone to pick me up. Good side: I got a whole bus for myself! Thank you Groundforce Portugal ‼️

And there were my parents. This is where my journey ended. I proceeded to enter a very bad depression period, which wasn't good!

Final notes

I can't emphasize how good this experience was. I met such amazing people.

A lot of people before this told me that I would probably never amount to anything, and the shit I imagined doing before I was 18, I wouldn't be able to do. They were all wrong.

I learnt a lot during that period. I had my ups and downs. But one thing I always could remember was that I had geniunely awesome people around me, and I'm thankful for that. For those people:

We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
'Til the blue skies chase those dark clouds far away

If my dumbass was able to do this, I believe you can do this too <3. The post will be the worst experience ever, just be prepared for that, but everything will go a-okay :)

Thanks for reading this.

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