My Airbnb story

How to ignore your degree and not know any better

You run out of money fast.

That was the first thing I learned after I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I focused on embedded systems, bigger legos with wires and lights.

My senior project from 2010. It was an rubics cube made with RGBa LEDs and accelerometers on the inside.

There was over $1,000 in my bank account. The most I had ever squirreled away. Every dollar saved would buy me more time after I graduated. All I wanted was time.

I was working as a research student at the Sensors, Energy, and Automation Lab at UW, designing visuals for technical projects that ranged from flexible sensor arrays for prostheses to absorption cooling microchips. There were a lot of late nights, but I had enough for two months of rent in my tiny U-district studio apartment and I was free to figure it all out.

When the money was gone, I hadn’t heard back from the entry level EE positions I applied for.