Before ATC NextGen Impact, I was a nobody.
Freshman year. No experience. Scared to step outside my comfort zone. Scared I wouldn't get a job. Scared I wasn't good enough yet. I kept waiting for the "right moment" to start doing real things.
Then I joined a team building a program from scratch — for free. Four months. Zero pay. Money out of my own pocket for transport.
And somewhere in those four months, something shifted.
"I stopped thinking about building as a checklist of skills you need before you start. I started thinking about it as a series of problems to solve with people."
Who are we building this for? What do they actually need? How do we make sure the outcome is real — not just impressive on paper?
I watched people pitch their ideas. I watched them struggle through their builds. I watched them figure it out anyway. And I realized — that's what product thinking actually is. It's not a framework. It's caring enough about the outcome to stay in the room when it gets hard.
The biggest thing that changed? I stopped waiting to feel ready.
Readiness is a myth. You learn by doing. You get good by shipping something imperfect and iterating. You build confidence by surviving the moments you thought would break you.
Start when you're not ready.
Don't wait for the right moment.
The right moment is the one you create.
— What I'd tell my freshman self.
If this project taught me one thing it's that the gap between "not ready" and "ready enough" is almost always smaller than the fear makes it feel. The only way to close it is to start.