#217 Stanford's youngest instructor on InfoSec, AI, catching cheaters - Rachel Fernandez

Speaker A: Welcome Back to the FreeCodeCamp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of FreeCodeCamp.org and today I'm um, interviewing Stanford's youngest instructor, Rachel Fernandez, a 19 year old student who also teaches their C course. First, some quick community news. FreeCodeCamp just published an Automation for Beginners course. You'll learn how to automate your daily routine tasks by piping together triggers and actions. And by the end of this course you'll have your own Model Context Protocol MCP server that you can share info with between your productivity apps and your agents. That's a four hour course on the FreeCodeCamp YouTube channel link in the description. Watch it after you finish listening to this podcast. FreeCodeCamp also published a full length handbook on data quality. You'll learn the most common ways that bad data enters the system and how to prevent them. You'll get exposure to the different layers where data validation needs to happen. Front end, back end database, business logic, data ingestion. This handbook will also walk you through testing strategies to keep bad data out of your projects. AI governance may sound like something that only managers need to worry about, but in practice it's us developers who actually have to build the responsible AI systems.

Speaker B: You can bookmark this new free Code

Speaker A: Camp handbook and code along with four hands on Python projects, a model card generator, a bias detection pipeline, an audit trail logger, and a human in the loop escalation system. This is a full handbook. Link in the Description this week's song of the week is Danzi Marilu by a French disco band, Lim Paratrice. Sorry, I'm not a French speaker. I hope I didn't totally butcher the name. This 2024 banger features a heavily syncopated bass line that I think you'll love, and the singer subtly alternates between French and Italian.

Speaker B: The music video is unique as well

Speaker A: and has super good vibes. I think you're going to love it. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,118 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at.

Speaker B: Uh.

Speaker A: Donate freecodecamp.

Speaker B: You can also pick up a shirt

Speaker A: like the one I'm wearing. Shop.freecodecamp.org $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US now for the interview.

Speaker B: I'm hyped to talk with her.

Speaker A: Rachel Fernandez. She grew up in Westminster, a small California town with a largely Mexican and Vietnamese population. 70% of the students at her high school had family income so low that they qualified for free school lunches, and Rachel was the first student from there to get into Stanford in years. We're going to talk about the state of computer science education in 2026. Rachel's thoughts on C, a language that she teaches at Stanford, and why she thinks it's still important. And her tips for how devs should go about using AI tools without deskilling themselves.

Speaker B: Rachel and Fernandez, welcome to the free Code Camp podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, Quincy.

Speaker B: Yeah, well I'm excited to ask you a whole bunch of questions. First, I want to talk a little bit about C. You teach Stanford C course. How important is C to the software ecosystem right now?

Speaker C: I think it's incredibly still important. I think there's a lot of push right now to go to programming languages like Python. These have become very popular recently. Um, a lot of the startups and companies that I talk to are writing in things like Go and Python. Um, I still think C is incredibly fundamental. To be honest though. I mean a lot of really, really big things have been written in C. And so in terms, uh, low level capabilities, in terms of systems and infrastructure, I think C still has a major part in the industry. Um, I can think of things like, I think the next honestly big thing, um, outside of the AI boom is robotics and I think um, particularly C, like low level stuff like this and systems things kind of like robotics still need programming languages like C. Um, there are still tons of issues and bugs with it, don't get me wrong. But it's still incredibly important just because so many of the things that our industry is built upon, the foundations of it is C. Yeah.

Speaker B: So like Windows for example, runs that C, like Python and JavaScript. Even if you're programming in those, you're under the hood C powers like their engines and stuff like that. Um, so right now there's a crisis in C, uh, around memory safety, memory corruption, timing errors and other exploitable issues within the language that have just been there for 50 years or so, 40, 45 years, however long C is around. And you actually had the C creator, the creator of the language, visit Stanford and speak at uh, your class. And one of the things he said in the past is he's imagining type safety, resource safety, memory safety, range safety, arithmetic safety, that they could all be standardized. How confident should people be that C will continue to be a secure language worth learning and building with? And I know that you work at a startup that's focused on security, so this seemed like the perfect question to be asking you.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Um, wait, Bjarn was Awesome. He came to come visit us? Uh, yes, yes. I think there are a lot of security issues with C and honestly this is one of my favorite parts of the language is that you're kind of just given full reign of the programming language in terms of memory access and stuff like that. Um, but I think people should still be fairly confident that the language itself is going to be safe and it's going to be continually used within industry. Um, the fact that Bjarn is still talking and still making improvements to C, it makes me feel fairly confident that I think he knows the gravity of the situation. So many things are built in C and there's been kind of a push recently to use other programming languages like Rust, because I think they have higher features and more security, um, implemented within it in that you're, I guess, given less free reign in terms of memory access and things like this. But I mean, there have been pushes made to make C more secure, things that you'd mentioned in that snippet that he had said. But things like profilers and modules and static analysis, all these things are components that are being built up right now for the programming language. And the fact that there's a push for this and the fact that Bjorn is so vocal about it, I think it makes me feel better and it makes me feel safe that this language is going to be continuously used. Um, in the context of security. A lot of the code that the companies that I work at, um, they're either doing pen testing or they're looking at like LLM generated code. Um, the security is not really looking at the low level stuff. But I think that fact is kind of scary upon itself. All the languages or all the code that we're looking at in terms of AI generated code, it's all built on the fundamentals of C code. If we are looking at all this AI generated code and it's built on something else, let's make sure that thing that it's actually built on is secure. And I feel fairly confident that a lot of people within the industry recognize this and realize this. And there's been a greater push to focus on security, um, especially within the past few years just because of all this AI generated code, um, people are just outputting a lot of code that they honestly genuinely don't understand. And so I think people are more cognizant of the fact that the code that they have to write has to be secure, um, or else a lot of big things like infrastructure are going to go down.

Speaker B: Yeah, and a lot of people blame the, uh, AI assistance, code generation, they'll take the code base. But would you say that it sounds like maybe some people should actually look at the underlying software, and maybe the software was always vulnerable in certain ways. They're just now being discovered. And you can't necessarily just blame LLMs for introducing so much insecurity.

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I think. Wait. I mean, there's a lot of bugs within C code. There's a lot of things that need to be fixed and a lot of things that need to be changed. I, um, think if you're writing web dev stuff, there's not a need for you to go down to the System Z type of, uh, material, but. No, absolutely. I think, um, there's a lot of issues with a lot of code being written right now. Um, but systems code, I think, is always just first off fun to look at. Um, and, yeah, there are tons of bugs and memory leaks and things like this, um, within the foundations of a lot of code that is being written. And so, um, yeah, I do think it's still important for developers to be looking through that type of code.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, let's talk about Treehacks, this massive hackathon at Stanford, which I was there. I made a documentary about it. You interviewed me. It was a lot of fun. You interviewed Sam Altman from OpenAI. Uh, you got to put together this entire event. It, uh, had a million dollars in prizes, 1,000 devs selected from 15,000 applicants. Uh, and, I mean, it sounds like a massive undertaking. Can you fill us in on the history of the hackathon and how you got involved?

Speaker C: Absolutely. So this is. This is the 12th year of Treehacks, which is really exciting. I feel like it has grown so, so much, um, from where we first began, just not even like a little bit more than a decade ago. Um, it started off as this thing that I think, uh, these three friends decided, you know, we should have a hackathon at Stanford. Like, let's just build one. Um, and the founders come back every year and they talk about how much the event has changed. Um, but, yeah, I think hackathons have become an even bigger thing just as of recently, especially with the AI. Boom. Um, but, yeah, this is our 12th year of treehacks, and I think it was the best one that we've had so far. Um, and in how I personally got involved in it. Uh, I actually, I did a lot of logistics stuff in high school, so I was the logistics director this year for Treehacks, and I organized the event last year, too. Um, but I took more of a leadership role this year. Uh, so when I first came to Stanford, I heard about this club, Treehacks, and it's quite popular here. A lot of people want to help organize the event just because of the grand scale of it. Um, and the community is really great as well. And I was around Club Fair and I saw this booth and I just, like, I was too scared to go up there. There were too many people asking questions. Um, I was doing in my math problem sets and someone had told me about the logistics behind the event. Um, and so I went to a very poor high school in that I remember for our robotics team. Like, we would struggle to raise like even $100, like doing a bake sale outside, like an Albertsons or a Vons. And so I had heard about the grand scale of. Right. It's like a big budget. And I think that really drew me to Treehacks, the fact that, like, any idea that I wanted to have anything that I wanted to implemented at Treehacks, and any big scale impact that I wanted to have could be done with Treehacks. And just the scale of the budget and the size of the event. Right.

Speaker B: I mean, the budget is phenomenal, like you said. Okay. For people outside the U.S. albertsons and Vons are like grocery stores. So you, like, bake a bunch of goods, like cookies and stuff. Then you go, you set up a table in front of this grocery store and you try to get people to buy your cookies and use that to raise money to buy like Arduinos or other robotics. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And to go from doing that to Stanford's budget, which I don't know if we can publicly reveal the budget for Treehacks. Uh, I know what it is. It's massive. Uh, yes. I mean, you talk about doing logistics. Maybe you can compare doing logistics in high school for robotics club to doing the logistics tree hacks. Thousand people, like tons of security, tons of, uh, you know, just like the buildings, like renting the actual auditorium where you interviewed Sam Eltman. Like, that was not free. Like, there was a lot involved in this process and you had to manage a lot of money and a lot of people along the way. Um, maybe you can just take a moment to compare and contrast your high school experience versus Stanford.

Speaker C: I think in high school, a big part of it is you have to sell people on whatever you're doing. Right. For the robotics team that I worked on in high school, it was like, you want to support us, right? We're like these low income kids that are Building robots. And I think that's great. And we have so much passion and energy, and so much of the time that we had spent fundraising was convincing people, you want to invest in us. And I think that's really hard. Why would companies that are struggling, right? I mean, it's been hard, I think, financially for a lot of people as of recently. Um, why. Why would you want to spend your money, right, that your company makes to come sponsor this tiny robotics team that hasn't won any big awards or anything like that. Right. Um, and then I came to Stanford, and it was just like, let me give you money. Let me sponsor this event. I mean, we have so many really big sponsors, um, part of the event. And it's wild. Like, I came into this position and it was suddenly so much more freeing. Like, it was. We have this huge budget. Literally, anything you can dream of, you can make it happen at Treehacks. And so I remember last year, I just. I threw out the idea of, uh, can we bring llamas to Treehouse? It was a complete joke. I didn't think anything of it. I was like, oh, it's going to be expensive, right? And the guy that came with the llamas was from, I think, central California, so he'd have to drive all this way up. And someone was just like, yeah, we can make it happen. Like, let's do it. Um, and so I think Llamas has kind of become a tradition at other hackathons as well. And we had llamas this year at Treehacks. Um, and, yeah, I mean, running this huge budget and this huge event has been, I think, one of the greatest things I've ever done in my lifetime. And into Treehacks is honestly one of my favorite weekends, I think, of my whole life. Um, it's incredible to be able to build this event that makes other people really happy. Um, but, yeah, it's a lot of work in terms of logistics. Just, I don't think I. This is, like, the first event I've ever planned at this scale. And I think there are just so many tiny things that go behind making an event like this that, like, you just, like, you never recognize until you're actually the one doing all the planning. Um, but I feel very lucky that I think a lot of hackers really enjoyed the event, and a lot of them actually noticed a lot of those tiny things. And so I think that means a lot to me in terms of planning this event. And all of it was totally and completely worth it. And I think it was one of the best things that I've done here at Stanford.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, uh, I had a close encounter with one of the llamas and I guess I have thank you to thank for that. That's going to be in the documentary. Took a big ball, like fistful of feed. It just went crazy for it. They are animals, let's put it that way. And I got to brush one too. Uh, majestic animals really. So, um, like, so high school, it sounds like you were just very resource starved. And I want to get into kind of like your, your background because it is novel. Like it's, it's not common. You, uh, were the first person from your high school to go to Stanford in years. And I think you said, like, out of your graduating class, you had one other person who went to like a prestigious school that went to Yale. Uh, but, but like, that's not where most of the people at your high school were aiming. They, uh, they were, I guess, less ambitious than you were to an extent. Um, like, can you talk about, um, what it was like at your high school? And um, Westminster, California, which is in Southern California, population 90,000 people, kind of a small, uh, town. Is it on, I don't know a lot about it. Is it on the coast or is it like a valley type town? Where is it exactly?

Speaker C: M. If you know, around, like the beachy areas of Southern California. Kind of like Newport Beach, Huntington Beach. It's about like 15, 20 minutes away from there.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Um, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, Westminster. I owe a lot to, I think where I grew up and that being Westminster, um, it's a very immigrant heavy town. So there's a lot of like Mexican, uh, and Vietnamese immigrants there. My high school in particular was, it was full of a lot of students that I think came from backgrounds of poverty and a lot of families that couldn't really afford to be living in Southern California, to be honest. Um, and I think for me, going to a high school like that really transformed the way that I view education, that I value it so much more. Um, I think when I entered high school, it was, I mean, a big part of it was I had grown up with people like this, and I saw that if you took the opportunity in terms of education to really, really push yourself that you could escape this level of poverty that I saw so many of my classmates, um, grow up in. And so I think for me it was all the way throughout high school. I would always push my classmates to be like, if you could just try a little bit harder in this class. Right. Maybe your GPA could be a bit higher. Maybe you could get into a better school. Um, but a lot of the students at my high school were just not motivated, to be honest. I think there was a small group of students that were interested within STEM that was maybe, like, 100 of us. And so, because my high school was low income, our district had allocated us more money in terms of, like, a STEM program. Um, and that was a great opportunity. I think it ended up leading me to come here to Stanford. And it really taught me that I liked computer science, but so many of my classmates just had absolutely no motivation to do well within school. And I think it's a cultural thing, and that's just something that they weren't pressured to do as kids. But it really frustrated me that, like, there were so many opportunities for them to grab onto that. Even if they took one thing, maybe they could get into a better college, right? Like, secure a better future. But I think more so than that, I saw that a lot of my classmates just had no passion for anything in particular. Like, a lot of what they did just. It was just kind of hanging out after school. And, like, I think there's nothing wrong with that, but it just really killed me that there were a lot of my classmates that could have done fantastic and incredible things and were truly, really talented and smart and just had no internal motivation to do anything within school and find anything that they were particularly passionate about. And I think that shaped a lot of my experiences in terms of being very grateful for any opportunity that I was given, especially at Stanford. I feel like I've tried to take on anything that was given to me just because, I don't know, I kind of have FOMO in terms of. I don't want to. I don't want to fall. Not fall, but, like, I want to keep that internal motivation going on within me. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. So fomo, fear of missing out. Um, yeah, you don't want to be caught slipping, so to speak, where you're, like, resting on your laurels, like, oh, okay, I got in this hand for. I ran this hackathon. Uh, or I accomplished this or that. Uh, that's cool. But I guess one question I have is, like, there. There's, like, the. The parable of Icarus who flies too close to the sun and his wings melt and he falls into the sea. And then his. His dad, Daedalus.

Speaker C: Oh.

Speaker B: Ah. I should have, like, helped rein in some of his ambition, I guess. Like, you are in, like, the most ambitious, perhaps part of the entire world, right? Like, yeah, Palo Alto, San Francisco Bay, uh, area. Right. Like you have, like, ambition is specifically something that is selected for. Um, if you read the books of like the, the various, like, you know, I guess air quotes, luminaries. Again, I don't want to sound overly critical, but the people out there that are, you know, taking all the money and giving it to the kids coming out of Stanford and getting them to, you know, ram into the wall as hard as they can with their idea to see who can break through.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Like, how do you kind of strike a balance between having that level of ambition that has gotten you where you are today without maybe going overboard and like, burning yourself out? Because I know that that happens. I've had lots of friends who've kind of like, cracked, so to speak, and just, ah, you know, like, gone to farm goats. Right. As they say about developers when they, when they have, uh, you know, edited a few too many, uh, lines of Java, they go farm goats.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Or maybe more, maybe llamas. Um, how do you strike that balance yourself?

Speaker C: Absolutely. I think in high school I definitely was very burnt out. I think there was this expectation that I put on myself, uh, that all this has to be worth for something. I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself and pushing myself until I came to Stanford. And I think when I received my acceptance letter to Stanford, that was my first sigh of relief that all of this was worth it. I pushed myself to this point and I can finally breathe. Right. And I think that I haven't felt that level of burnout that I did from high school, to be honest, for quite a while. I don't think I've even experienced it here at Stanford. And I think if you talk to a lot of Stanford students, to be honest, I think a lot of them will tell you that Stanford in some ways feels easier than high school. And I think it's also that, like, we all just went through so much in high school that like, obviously we look back and we don't think it was as bad as it actually was. Um, but I feel like the classes here are very manageable. But there's definitely an expectation at Stanford in particular, I feel like compared to other big schools like MIT or Caltech, is that you have to be doing everything. I think if you go to talk to other people at more like researchy, heavy schools, a lot of what they're just doing is classes and research and that's great and that's awesome for them. Um, but at Stanford there's definitely a culture of you have to be founding something you have to be talking to venture capitalists. You have to be also having a 4.0 GPA in all your CS classes. Um, you also have to be doing research. And I think that expectation that you have to be doing all these things is what drives a lot of people to burnout, especially at a school like Stanford. Um, and so I think for me in particular, the burnout is kind of fun in that I really, really just enjoy making myself busy and pouring myself into things and people that I love. And so I don't think I've experienced that burnout just because of the community, the people here. Like, I think everyone here is working very hard towards something that they're passionate and really ambitious about, and I think that's very inspiring. And whenever I feel a sense of I'm getting overwhelmed, I can fully and completely just talk to other people about this. Right. But I think, like, pouring myself into things that I. That I truly love has helped prevent the burnout and that I feel like I'm not doing things for the sake of, like, getting into college. Like, I kind of was in high school.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: It's more just like this is like, uh, for example, the tree hacks. Like, that was, I think, one of the busiest and most stressful times of my entire life. For the past, like, eight months, we've been planning this hackathon. And at least, like, the two months leading up to it, I feel like I was working on it at least like, seven, eight hours a day. And the week.

Speaker B: The week, that's a lot on top of normal studies like you had this weekend. And it's not like you got like, some past and not have to study for exams or something. Right?

Speaker C: Yes. I'm still.

Speaker B: It was on top of your entire academic. And of course, you mentioned you're working at, like, a security company out there.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, I'm also part of, like, the security teams here, and I lecture on the side as well. It's a lot of work. Right. Um, but I just. I like, love. I love doing these things. Like, if. I think if you talk to any of the organizers from this year, I think if any. If you ask any of them, like, you saw Rachel being very stressed out and very. Like, she was. She was just kind of losing it at some points. I think all of them would say, like, it's just because she's so passionate about this. Like, there's. I would never, ever take back the time that I took doing tree hats and all the stress that I went through, through, because, number one, I got Great stories out of it. And I feel like I grew a lot as a person, but I just genuinely adored it. And when the hackers were coming into the building that we hosted Treehacks in, and just getting to meet all these people that I feel like I've worked so hard for, I always knew that a thousand people are going to come to this event and then finally actually meeting them and being like, I put all this work and effort into this event. For someone like you, who's also worked really hard to get here, it's the most fulfilling and heartwarming thing ever. And even when I teach at Stanford, it's also a lot of work. Lecture my own class, um, I handle a team of graders, I make my own assignments and lectures and that takes up a lot of time and effort, but I just adore teaching. I love that. And so I think for people that are struggling with burnout, especially at school, um, it's very possible for you to pour yourself into things and still get burnt out. I think I felt a little bit about that after Treehouse. But finding things that you're genuinely passionate about and then finding community within that I think is so important to maintaining kind of like your self composure and ensuring that when the stress gets there, you have people to talk to and the stress comes, comes from, I guess, kind of a good spot because you, you genuinely just love doing the things that you're choosing to do.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I have a question about that because, you know, you mentioned that this, you know, high school run up to college was an extremely burnout inducing experience for you and that once you got to university is actually a lot easier and like you could kind of take a breath and it wasn't quite as crunched. Uh, but um, and I've heard that from a lot of people in a lot of different cultures, like people from India, people from China, uh, people from Europe. The actual process of getting into university is often way harder than actually going to university and succeeding in an academic setting like that. Um, Stanford has a very low acceptance rate and it's very difficult to get in. Uh, can you, like, there are probably some parents listening to this. There might be some high schoolers listening to this that would love to go to a school like this. Stanford that opens so many doors, uh, industry and, and offers like awesome experiences like Treehacks to people who attend. Uh, yeah. What can you walk us through, like that process of getting into Stanford and uh, like all the different things that you had to do along the way and like theories of why they Accepted you as opposed to other people. Like, was it based on your robotics club work, Things like that? Like, anything you can give us that would be useful to people who are thinking about either having like, attending, uh, you know, a selective institution like Stanford or. Um, and you mentioned some aspects where Stanford is even like, more m hardcore or more, um, than like MIT and Caltech and other like, hardcore engineering schools. Yeah, um, particularly because of like, the connection to Silicon Valley and like the venture capital ecosystem and like all these giant tech companies that are based, uh, you know, within a few miles of our Stanford located. Uh, like people who don't already know this, like, Google came out of Stanford, um, you know, like pretty much all the big tech companies, like Yahoo was like, right in the area and like, yeah, Sun Microsystems was right in the area. Like a lot of the important companies throughout kind of tech history have been like, in that general vicinity. So again, to, to stop giving you context and just to ask the question again, how do people get into a school like Stanford? And what was your experience?

Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, I get asked this a lot, even from where I am, from home, just because not a lot of people are exposed to big schools like Stanford. And it's not very common for someone to get into a school like Stanford. Um, there are a lot of different reasons as to why I think I could have been accepted. I think Stanford used to. They actually used to let you read your application and see what your admission officer would say about your application. Um, they unfortunately removed that, which I was very devastated to hear about. I think, honestly, a big, big part of it is passion. And I think that's like such a generic thing that people will say is like, oh, you have to be passionate to get into college. I think it's true. And honestly, I think it is a bit unfortunate in that I think I was very lucky to find very early on that I liked computer science. My freshman year of high school is when I first discovered teaching and I first discovered cybersecurity. And that's when I knew that I loved CS and I wanted to keep pursuing it. Um, but I have a lot of classmates that didn't know what they wanted to do until their senior year of high school. And for some of them, they still don't know what they want to do. They're at community college and they're trying a bunch of different things, and I think that's fantastic. I think everyone takes college at their own pace. And for some people, this environment is not what they need to grow as human beings. Um, but quite honestly, I do think passion plays a very, very large part of it. I think, uh, when I was approaching this whole college applications thing, I think a big part of it was should I focus on one particular thing throughout high school or should I be like a generalist and trying a bunch of different things? Um, I think for students in high school they should just try whatever they are interested in. The way that I first approached high school was I did not want to go to Stanford. It was actually I wanted to go to like a small Cal State in California when I first came into school. Because this is kind of what my parents had impressed on me, um, when I was younger. But you know, when I came to high school I knew I will never have the opportunity again in my life to just try a bunch of different things for free and just see what I like and what I don't like. And at the time I didn't really know what I wanted to do in terms of career or what I wanted to major in in college. And so I tried a bunch of different things and that's how I ended up finding about cs. Um, I think that's the right way to approach high school. I think there's a lot of societal pressure and a lot of external pressure to get into schools like Stanford. But honestly, just try whatever you like and see what you're passionate about. And once you find what you're really truly passionate about, just go deep into it. And I think the question of should I go into one niche specific thing to get into college or should I, um, you know, should I be more of a generalist? I don't think that's really the question that people should be asking. I think it's more what are you passionate about and what have you been doing to work on this? Um, I think a lot of people make things for the sake of doing things for college and I would very much recommend not doing that. Um, the first reason is that if you pour your time into something in high school, for example, a lot of people make like non profit education things in high school. Um, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's what you're passionate about. But a lot of people that I've talked to are just making them for the sake of saying that like they tutored X people in X amount of things. Right? If you are making things for the sake of making things for college, let's say you don't get into your dream school. That time that you had spent towards something that you weren't truly Passionate about is time that, in my opinion, was kind of wasted. Right. And I think high school is such a great opportunity to meet awesome people and try new things. Things. Um, and so I think you should honestly, genuinely find something that you're passionate about and just dive fully and deeply into it. And when you're writing your college application essays, I think I always encourage people to just, like, write how they speak. Um, I'm someone that just, like, speaks, I think, very passionately, and I feel like it's very easy for me to talk about things that I'm excited about. But I think a lot of people get scooped up into the. It has to sound formal. It has to sound all these things. I think when you are applying to big schools like Stanford, especially the Ivy Leagues, they want, like, the human part of you. They want, like, the raw part. Like, it doesn't have to sound like an interview when you write your application. Um, and so you really want to just find what you're passionate about and you want to write about it, and you should write about it in a way that, like, it doesn't sound fake when you talk about it because you genuinely are this excited about this. And if you haven't found that passion, that's totally okay. Just try different things and see what you're interested in. Um, and I think for cs, this is something a lot of people want to major in. Right. Um, and so when I was approaching CS, right. Everyone applies for CS at Stanford. Stanford. I think it's like 50% of the students here end up switching or came in as cs. And Stanford is great in that, like, you can switch your major as many times as you want and they don't. It's not impacted. I think that's what other universities call it. Um, so when I was writing my Stanford application, I think this is the biggest tip I give to people is you want to find what makes you so uniquely you. There are just so many other applicants that have the same status. Like, they have a high gpa and they did this and this and this, and they did research and all these things, and they have all these big awards. But what makes you uniquely you? And I think a lot of people on their college applications will write, oh, I want to be. I want to be at Stanford because I'm doing, like, they have this program for me, or there's this professor I can do research with. Um, that's great and all, and I'm great. You. It's like, great that you know what you want from this school, but the entire Point of your college application is you need to sell yourself to this school. Why should this school accept you over someone else? And this is the entire mindset that I had when I was writing my Stanford application. Um, and I think that helped me a lot. And so I thought about what unique characteristics do I bring as like a human being to Stanford and to the culture and to the community. Um, and I would recommend writing, like, very niche topics in your application. Try to talk about the most unique stories that you have and what new makes you so special. And especially if you're particularly passionate about something, which I think you should be if you're applying to a school like Stanford, talk about that. Um, and I would say try to be as, I guess, like, emotionally raw as possible without making it too crazy. Without, I guess, like, crashing out over, um, any application or anything like that. Um, yeah, I think you just. I think admission officers just, they want to be sold on why they should pick you for school. And, and I guess I can talk about, for me in particular, I don't know how helpful this is. Uh, a big part of my growing up is that I'm mixed. I'm Spanish, I'm Vietnamese, and I'm Argentinian, and I'm a girl within computer science. And that's not something that people often talk about, but there's other people like me. Right? And so when I was approaching cs, a big part of what I loved doing in high school was teaching. And so a big part of my application was I thought, okay, every other person that's applying to Stanford for CS is going to be doing research. They're probably going to be interested in one specific niche topic within cs. Um, I was just thinking of the most stereotypical CS person that I could think of. Right. Um, and I tried to recognize. I got out a piece of paper and I wrote, okay, I'm unique in these aspects. And I think a big part of me is I just love bringing community together. And I love. Um. I guess a big part of my application was just bringing humanity back into computer science. And I think that's a topic that not a lot of people talk about. Um, so in any way that you can differentiate yourself from other people is an opportunity that you should take and you should write about it. And, um, a lot of people that I knew in high school did just one extracurricular throughout high school. Um, this is my hot take. I don't think that's. I think that's great if that's something you're passionate about, but I think it's hard to get into college if you do just one thing throughout high school, whether that's like band or robotics or things like this. There were a lot of brilliant, amazing people that I knew through the robotics program that I did in high school that just did robotics all throughout their time, um, in high school. And they did incredible things.

Speaker A: Things.

Speaker C: But it's just hard to put onto paper the things that you've done for just one club. And so I think it's better to try a bunch of different things and have a bunch of different experiences on your application, rather than pour your time and efforts all into just one single extracurricular. Unless you do believe and fully feel like that is the one thing that you truly love, then I think the passion that you get out of it and when you write about it will come through. Um, but this is just something that I experienced. I saw so many brilliant people who just poured their time into one extracurricular who I think should have ended up at big schools like Stanford. But when you compare that application to someone else that has done so many other different types of things and just got a wide range of experiences, it feels more tempting to pick the person with a wide range of experiences, in my opinion. Um, so, yeah, in terms of tips for Stanford, just be passionate, be excited, try a bunch of different things. M and it's hard to ignore the societal pressure to go to big schools like Stanford. But I fully and fundamentally believe that like, like everyone who applies to college will end up where they need to be. And if that's at a school like Stanford, I think you will end up there. And if not, that's totally and completely okay too. You'll find your own sense of community somewhere. Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow. Like, uh, I took so many notes while you were talking because I think that. So if I had to recap some of the things that you said there, because I think they are important and I think they're overlooked by people. I mean, there's like an entire industry that like preparing people to get into these programs, especially overseas, trying to help people get like into a university. And uh, there's a lot of, kind of conventional wisdom that you kind of challenge there. Um, but one thing is, even though specialization is rewarded, obviously in the workplace and uh, things like that, like in terms of the application process, you do want to have a lot of different things so you can be able to not just listen that you went really hard on robotics for like four years, but you tried this and this and this. And uh, having like a general theme in Your application. You said bringing, uh, humanity back to computer science was kind of the overarching theme.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I think a big part of college essay writing. I've read a lot of college essays and just helping friends from back home write their essays. You need to have a story. Like, there needs to be, like, someone. Um, actually this might be helpful. Uh, when I came to Stanford for my, uh, admin weekend. So this is like when I was first considering whether or not to take Stanford, um, they have this thing called Admit Weekend. And all the people that were admitted come out and basically Stanford tries to sell you on why you should pick their school. Right. Um, you meet with your admission officer outside under the sunny California weather. And my admission officer basically told me that the process for admissions is, is, um, someone will read your application, and if they think that you're solid enough, what they will do is, I think there's some sort of process for meeting some people out. But, um, basically the end goal is that your admission officer wants to be able to make a presentation on you and sell to other admission officers why you should in particularly be picked. And that blew me away when I found that someone in the admissions room literally made a presentation about me and fought for me in front of a council of other people that also needed students to be admitted from their side. Right. I felt so honored and so seen when she had told me that. But it's also, I think, a very terrifying fact that had I known going to admissions, I would have been so scared to write my application.

Speaker B: Yeah. So to emphasize what you just said, you need an internal champion, essentially advocating for you to their peers. You need to sell somebody so hard they're willing to put their own reputation on the line advocating on your behalf. So this is kind of what, like, enterprise sales, which I do a little bit of, uh, free code camp, like. But basically you're trying to find somebody, make a connection with them and convince them that, like, no, like, this is definitely the right tool for the job. Like, you should adopt my, you know, LLM M as opposed to that other foundation model or whatever. Right. Like, and then you should put your own reputation on the line to go forth. And you know, it. This makes a lot of sense and, and it really contextualizes the, uh, job search. Um, so one thing that I want to ask is, uh, I just also want to recapitulate the fact that you need to have a story. Um, yes. It's not just a collection of bullet points. Bullet points do not do it. They do not win the day Right. Um, but at the same time, maybe a narrative that kind of walks over the different facets of your high school experience and your aspirations and goals, uh, making appeals to, like, oh, I love this program so much because this professor, I read their book and xyz, that's. That's kind of like wasting time, wasting, uh, space in your application. Uh, is kind of the vibe that I'm getting from you, that you're not trying to, like, kiss up to them and get them to think that, oh, this is, this will be a very, uh, you know, like, enthusiastic student. They're looking for people that. That are, I guess, um, not just sycophantic in their applications, but rather confident that they would bring something novel to the university and not just show up and accept the offerings of that university.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. I think I would really, really avoid the most generic essays that people write. Um, for me, I think there's a question that Stanford asked about, about curiosity. Like, what shapes the world in terms of what you find curious? And how do you develop that skill as a person? Um, and I tried to think really hard, okay, what would everyone else write? And I think a lot of people would write, oh, I was part of this computer science club, and I really found out I was interested about this specific thing within cs and I did research with this professor. So many other people are writing essays like that. What makes you unique? Um, actually, I think in my entire Stanford application, I barely talked about my academics. I talked a lot more about just who I was, was as a human and my personality. And I love that. The Stanford application, I think, focuses in more on that. But the way that I ended up answering that question was about my. I have a pet parrot, and she got sick my freshman year of high school. And I went on this whole ordeal of having to do research, and I found out that a lot of doctors that I was going to, like, they didn't even know what they were talking about when it came to the health of my bird. And so it kind of shaped the world. And that I recognized that, like, the professionals didn't have all the answers right, and that I kind of had to, like, do all my own research. And I think I was so proud of that essay because it was just so uniquely me, you know what I mean? Like, this is a unique experience that who else is going to talk about their sick burden in their Stanford application? You know what I mean? So it's really selling yourself, having a narrative and thinking, okay, what would everyone else write? And it's fine if you have to write what everyone else writes. Like, if that's all you have, that's great. But if there's something unique and something that you can tie an interesting story to. I just love interesting stories. I think you should absolutely do this. That.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it sounds like you had the confidence to talk about something that people might dismiss as, oh, that's such a trivial thing. Like that, like, they're going to feel insulted that I'm talking about my. My parents.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: In my college or, you know. Um, but you had the confidence to, like, no, this is relevant to, uh, who I am. And so you were able to tie it into the story. And that, I think, illustrates a certain degree of confidence in one's own thinking. Thinking and reasoning. Um, yeah. That's really cool. So the process of getting into Stanford, I mean, you said that it was, like, a pretty exhausting, like, that final sprint toward the finish line in high school. Can you talk about, like, what those final few months, uh, at high school were like. Like, during this process, because you said you got really burned out, and then it was, like, a huge reprieve once, you know, uh, you were in and you could, like, just let that go to an extent and decompress a bit.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think it's honestly a lot of a mental game in that whenever I was given an opportunity, I knew that I had to pour myself fully and completely into it and really try my best to stand out. And I think it was. It was that I wanted other people to perceive me as, you know, this person that works really hard. But I think also internally, it was anything that I was given, I wanted to take full and complete. Like, I just wanted to put all my effort into it. Right. Like, this is something that was given to me. I should try my hardest with it. And I think that mindset is honestly just incredibly exhausting. I think there were, like, at least, like, 10 different things that I was part of in high school, and I genuinely tried my hardest to pour myself into everything that I was working on. And also the people that I was working with. Right. I think the community that I was in high school was really important to me, and making sure that my peers felt supported, too, was really important. Um, it was. It's just mentally taxing, in my opinion, to be in high school and want to be part of. Want to. Want to go to a school like this. There's this constant, like, notion that, like, any moment that I'm free is a moment that I should spend doing something. Uh, this is a thought that I had for all four years throughout high school. Um, my weekends were spent doing robotics or my weekends were spent doing research or doing, doing homework that I caught up on because I was doing other extracurriculars throughout the week. Um, and that's like so exhausting. Like, I cannot think of like a single week where I ever took a break off. And it hit the point my senior year of high school where like, there was a, there was a competition I was at and I literally just like broke down sobbing. And I remember my dad was trying to comfort me and being like, oh, when you go to Stanford, like, you will be with other people that have worked just as equally as hard as you to get to where you are. Um, and you're going to feel support and you're going to feel. But that was something that I very much struggled with in high school. Um, that mental taxation of like, you always could be doing more. There's always someone that's doing more than you. And at least when I came to Stanford, that sigh of relief that I'm referring to is I knew that I was going to be okay. Like, all this was worth for something. Right? I think in high school it's very scary to think about all this effort and time that you're putting into things might not even be worth it. Like, you might not even end up at a school that like, I had friends that worked really hard in high school and they ended up at community college. And there's nothing wrong with community college. I think it's honestly great. And I think they, they've grown a lot as people, but I know they were severely disappointed at the fact that they didn't end up at least a uc. And I feel really bad for them and I think that's incredibly scary. And I think that is what I mean about the burnout and that there's this mindset like you always have to be doing more because there's someone else doing more than you. Um, that's so scary. And I can confidently say that now I'm at Stanford, I have this sense of comfort that I'm going to be okay. I worked here and I'm at the school and I'm going to be ok. And I worked really hard to get to this, this point and I'm really great that I, I'm really grateful that I have that sense of stability in my life. Um, but it's really hard in high school to balance it all, to have a work life balance. And I honestly can say I, I feel like I didn't really have work, life, balance, but I wouldn't have changed anything. I feel like I grew a lot as a person and the people that I knew that were also going through this, like, in that way we had a sense of community. Um, but yeah, it's, it was, it was really hard. I was really burnt out my senior of high school and I got into Stanford early and I didn't, I didn't apply to any other schools besides the ucs. And I feel very lucky that I got in early and I didn't have to write like 20 more college applications over my winter break. Um, but yeah, I was very burnt out after the whole process and if I had to do it all over again, I don't know how I would do it. I honestly think I worked harder in high school than I have at Stanford. And it's just because of that scary mindset, to be honest.

Speaker B: So, uh, you have to do more because there's always someone doing more than you. That's the mindset that is, is grinding you and burning you out, essentially.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I want to talk a little bit like you don't know what you're doing. That is excessive. Like, maybe I don't need to do as much of this. Maybe I can get away with doing less of this. And you don't know. At the end of the day, uh, you could, you can probably presume that some amount of your effort was squandered, but you don't know which effort. So, I mean, you don't really have a way to tease all that. That must be also a frustrating aspect of it. Um, just the opacity of the process. Even with Stanford being pretty transparent, I guess historically they used to actually show your application, uh, like the comments and stuff. But, um, I imagine that could be quite, uh, tilting for a lot of people that are just trying to get into a good school. And you mentioned some of your classmates that were trying really hard to get into, uh, you know, more selective schools and ended up just having to go to community college, which is a fine outcome if you're not aiming high. If you just want to go to an inexpensive school. California's community college system is like the best in the world. It's very reasonably priced, excellent teaching. Uh, that is not a bad place to end up by any means. But yeah, if you were aiming to get into like, UC, um, you know, LA or if you're aiming to get into Cal or something like that, then, then that could be kind of crushing that you're not able to achieve that despite all of your effort. So when there is so much incentive to get in to these programs, people are gonna try to cut corners naturally, because it's really hard. And you don't even necessarily know if it's worth it because you have. You see all these other people that are not necessarily getting into it, despite having expended all the effort. And. And that can lead to a lot of academic dishonesty, people cheating, things like that. And you have taught at Stanford in addition to being a student, so you've been exposed to a lot of academic dishonesty. Uh, and I wanted you to, if you can, like, maybe talk a little bit about that. Like, students cheating in high school, students cheating at university, and like, just share any thoughts you have on that. Like, what is driving that? Like, what can be done about that. Like, what you would say to somebody who is considering cutting corners, maybe using LLMs to write their papers, maybe, um, not necessarily studying, but just like, pulling up cheat sheets and stuff like that.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, I think for. So, I mean, AI. The whole AI boom happened my senior year around spring quarter. Like, I remember right before I came to Stanford was when I. All this was happening. It was honestly scary. I feel so tremendously grateful that I did not have AI uh in high school. I think it is so tempting to have to use those. Not to have to use those tools, but to have them available to you. If everyone else is using it, then sometimes it feels like, oh, it's okay if I do this too. I feel so lucky that I thugged it out that I had to learn chemistry from the textbook, that I had to write all these papers and stay up late and learn how to actually effectively communicate through papers. I feel very, very lucky that I didn't have any of this pressure or any of this access to these tools. Um, and in some ways, I do wish college was still like that. Uh, I have a younger brother who's in high school, and he just tells me, I mean, everything, in my opinion, is like, translated to paper. Everyone's doing everything on paper. If he has to write an essay for a class, it's, you have to sit down, you have to write it on paper, and you can't, you can't. You can't use LLMs or anything like that. I think that sucks. And I think that it's awful that we have to start putting more rules on students that generally wouldn't cheat because everyone else is cheating. Um, I think if you think about the mindset of someone that is trying to get into a big school like, um, the Ivies or Stanford GPA is just so, um, it's like the bare minimum now to get into a big school. Like, uh, you have to have a perfect GPA to even be considered for, for a school like Stanford. And I think GPA inflation is something that a lot of people have been talking about recently and that it's just so easy to get A pluses now. There's. I mean, even at my high school, there was such a push to give everyone A's and to give everyone high grades, so the graduation rate could be higher. Right. So we wouldn't hold people back. Even though very clearly there are some people that should have been held back. Um, there's some people that, like, would get Fs at my high school. Like, they just genuinely put in no effort. They would come over for like a summer program. They would just sit and watch videos. Like, literally they don't have to take quizzes or tests on anything. And, um, they would get credit for that class just by, like, staying at school for like, two hours a day and like, watching videos, which I think is absurd. Um, but I think that's a different type of person for the type of person that's like, hyper competitive. I think it's very easy to use these tools just for the. Okay, I just need to get this bare minimum GPA in order to even qualify for some of these schools. On top of. Okay, the time that I would have spent doing school can be time spent doing extracurriculars or other things that can boost my application. Um, that mindset is. I think it's.

Speaker B: Yeah, so just to be clear, because there's so much pressure to also do all these extracurriculars. But you have to check the box of having, like, a perfect gpa. A lot of people are looking around and saying, well, if I can just farm out the GPA part to LLMs and do the extracurricular stuff, then I'll have more time for extracurricular. So they're maybe being squeezed. Like, they don't feel they have time to do both.

Speaker C: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that's the perfect way to put it. Um, that mindset is quite scary. Uh, even at Stanford, I was a TA my freshman year for the Intro to CS classes. And I mean, I saw so much cheating. I think a lot of people always have this mindset of like, oh, I'll just learn it later. I just need to get this done. Um, I think particularly at Stanford, because of what I mentioned earlier, everyone is trying to do everything right. People are trying to make a startup and do research and also do the classes on top of clubs that they're doing. And it's just too much work for, I think, one person. And so this pressure, it's the same thing of, oh, my classes are like, least important. I think particularly at Stanford, people have this sense of security, like, oh, because I'm at this school, I could just cheat and I would still get a degree from here and then I'll have a job and I'll still be fine. But I think it's honestly so sad that people think that way. Um, and whenever I had students that would cheat, I mean, I couldn't directly talk to them, but it was the narrative that we would tell these students is, you're paying all this money to go to this school and what are you getting out of it? The AI knows how to do these things, right? The entire point of you being part of school is that you can teach yourself these things. I'm not teaching that. I'm not teaching le chapter chatgpt how to do proofs or things like this. You are the one that needs to learn how to do proofs. And it's really unfortunate. A lot of the. I think the test scores at Stanford have tanked, but GPA inflation is still very high here. And it's unfortunate. And I think it's really hard to motivate people that have access to these tools and freely and openly use these tools, um, when there's just so much growth and learning that can be done here. And for me in particular, I'm paying for ion college. It makes me really appreciate that I'm paying X amount of money to go to school. I need to get as much out of it as possible and that includes learning from my classes. But I think a lot of students here just don't have that insight or that maturity, to be honest, to recognize that. And it's just always easier to take the easy way out. And it's becoming incredibly easy and it's really hard to catch cheating. I know people that use tools that humanize certain things that they get out of check ChatGPT for essays that they would write. And I think that's crazy that there are layers upon layers upon layers of AI to replicate a human's writing. Um, it's just really unfortunate. I think that these people are going to get hard when they have to do technical interviews for schools. Um, but yeah, it's really unfortunate and I think schools are taking bigger measures to deal with it. But I don't think they'll ever fully be able to handle all the AI tools that people are using. They're just getting too good in my opinion. It.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's kind of an arms race basically. Uh, the AI tools can't tell. They can't detect the output of AI tools no matter how much, you know, companies try to sell these, uh, you know, school systems anti cheating or cheating detection software. Like fundamentally, if an LLM can't tell whether it created an output, then how are you going to do that? And I had um, uh, a guest a while back who's talking about like there are certain attributes like burstiness of an LLM and like certain, like. Oh, and a lot of people like armchair, you know, uh, LLM detector, people who love to do that thing. Uh, they will, um, say, oh, if you use a lot of EM dashes, you, that means that you just. And you know what, I use tons of EM dashes throughout my writing for years and years. All my writing was. So I had to like rewire how I write to not use EM dashes because I don't want people to think that I'm using an LLM. So it's ruined EM dashes for me.

Speaker C: It's ruined EM dashes for me too. Those are my favorite things to use. I remember when I unlocked those in high school, I was like, oh, I'm unstoppable. I know how to use em m dashes. And then of course ChatGPT still uses em m dashes. It's so unfortunate. Anyone that I know uses EM dashes. It's, it's so unfortunate.

Speaker B: I mean it's the most like, uh, it's the Flex tape of writing basically. Yes, you can use it for anything, um, anytime you're not sure what grammatical or like what punctuation to use EM dash it and you can just append the clause. So where are you going from here is one of the questions that I'm very curious about because you're pretty early in your college career. How many more years do you have before you graduate?

Speaker C: I'm a sophomore right now, so I still have two more years. Maybe we'll get my master's here. We have a one year master's program at Stanford. Um, but yeah, it's really scary. It's going by quite quickly, but yeah, two more years.

Speaker B: Yeah. And like, what are your current plans? I know you're working at the security company, um, and you've been teaching at Stanford. Again, huge accomplishment to be a student and also being an instructor. Um, but like, like where do you see yourself heading? Or, like, how are you going to make the most of the next two years or so before you look at going to grad school or look at the job market?

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. M. I think there's honestly still a lot of pressure for me to try a bunch of different things here. Uh, I think Stanford, I don't know how I will feel in two years. But as of the moment right now, I love this school, and I love the fact that I can literally learn whatever I want at any time by the best people in the world at this school. And there are so many things that I want to try that I just haven't tried yet. And it's scary that I feel like I have to cram all. All these things in two years. Um, I think a big part of why I work so hard is that I want my future to be stable and I want to feel like whatever I put my time into at Stanford made me a better person, that I grew more as a person. And I feel like there's a lot of pressure, at least internally within me, that I have to just work really hard here to make use of every opportunity possible. And I think that mindset from high school is kind of coming back to me. And so I've gotten better at work, life balance here. But, yeah, there's this pressure that I feel to. To do as many things as possible. M. So, yeah, right now, uh, well, I just wrapped up Treehacks, which was fantastic. And I think it really taught me a lot about, um, when I think about potential career paths, I think a big part of what I was pushed to do as a kid is the dream job is to do sue at Google. That is stability. You got money. It's always going to be a great job. And so this was something that I came into Stanford thinking, oh, I wanted to. I want to do swe@big tech. Yeah.

Speaker B: Swe is software engineer.

Speaker C: Yes, Software engineer.

Speaker B: It's just a short, sweet way to say it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I think after doing Treehacks, it taught me more that, like, a lot of what I really, truly love doing is connecting with people and building community and leadership and just putting on things that make other people happy. And maybe my dream job is not just sitting at my desk every day, like, coding. I think this is what Tree X has taught me. And so I think all the other future opportunities that I'm considering, I do want to build my technical skills, but also just, like, connecting with people, I think is a very big passion of Mine. Um, but yeah. So Tree X just wrapped up and I'm still thinking a lot about what I want to do in terms of a career, just because I feel like I don't have that many years left, um, which is scary. But, yeah, right now I'm working at a security startup in SF and I'm also working at a security, uh, company in the summer, it's called Armad, and they actually just went public. Uh, but they're working on AI agents that do penetration testing, which is basically hacking into systems. Um, I think this space is super cool and it's kind of like the first thing that I tried here at Stanford. Um, I knew that coming into here I wanted to try research and robotics and security and even some bio stuff. Um, and so I looked down the list of things that I wanted to try and I said, okay, I'll try security first. I ended up joining both the cybersecurity teams here at Stanford and I've absolutely loved it. And then I was like, okay, you know what, this field is stable. This is something that I think will always be in the future of AI generated code. It's always insecure, right? So there's always going to be a spot here. And I think security is super fun because it's very gamified in that you're given kind of like a puzzle, right, and then you have to get your way into it. And I feel very lucky in that. Security, I feel like, was the first thing that I tried here and I genuinely just adored it and I loved it and I'm going to try a bunch more things here next year, but this might just be the thing that I end up going into. And I've loved all the startups that I've worked at so far. Um, and so, yeah, I think for me right now it's taking hard classes, but also I want to venture out more into Silicon Valley. Um, maybe I would consider starting something while either in school or after I've graduated. I think a lot of the best founders make good companies in their late 20s. And so I don't know if I would feel like experienced enough, but honestly, I don't know if you ever feel experienced enough to make your own startup. But yeah, I think for me right now it's just I really enjoy learning more about the business aspect of directions to startups. And, um, I don't know, I'm still considering a bunch of different careers, but it's just still honestly trying a bunch of different things to see what I really like until I have to venture out into the big world and make a decision.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, that observation that we'll probably always need security engineers essentially, uh, there's always going to be some frontier that's being explored and potentially exploited by attackers and things like that. Sounds like a good place to focus. I want to talk a little bit about, um, AI and how it's impacting the security field if you still have a few minutes. Uh, there was this curl maintainer, I don't know if you're familiar with this, he gave a talk at, I think it was Pycon or something, but he was talking about how the volume of spurious security disclosure, people basically responsibly, disclosing, hey, there's this vulnerability, uh, and opening, you know, GitHub issues and things like that. That it was taking like six or seven hours a week, every week was just like people using LLMs to analyze the curl code base and find usually hallucinated security issues and that he had to take all these very seriously and it was just burning them out because it's like, uh, the LLMs apparently are not that great at finding vulnerabilities. At least they weren't a few months ago when uh, he gave this talk. But what are some of the ways that security is being impacted by AI Systems?

Speaker C: The company that I'm working for right now, basically what their job is, they look at PRs, which are pull requests from GitHub. So basically the way that most software engineers work, most companies, uh, work is they have something called GitHub and they'll have these things called repos, and think of them as just code bases that a bunch of different people can collaborate and work on. Um, a pull request is basically you want to make an edit to something in the repository. Um, you'll write code and then you'll push to the repository. These pull requests are basically changes in code. The company that I'm working at right now, basically their entire thing is that they look at the pull requests and they see the code that oftentimes Claude or Codex is writing and they will say, you wrote specific things that are definitely, definitely not safe in any way. Um, a lot of LLM generated code does this. Like a lot of, a lot of cloud code is unsafe. And I think it's.

Speaker B: That would make sense, that would make sense though, because it's trained off of the open web's code. Like all the open Source repos on GitHub, many of which are not secure. Right. Many of which were written by people who didn't necessarily have A really firm grasp on security. Or maybe it's older code that hasn't been updated as new uh, security best practices come online. So it totally makes sense that LLMs, uh, would be generating insecure code left and right.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, so that's what the company I'm doing with right now does. And they also, they inject specific prompts into LLMs or into CLAUDE to make sure that like, hey, this code base is built for this. It probably will have this feature. Let's make sure that this feature is particularly safe. Um, it's really unfortunate that at least at Stanford there's no push to learn security stuff here. Security is a very tiny space within the undergrad at least population at Stanford. The people on my security team have asked Stanford publicly, like, could you, could you at least make a security track? Like we have different tracks that we can major um, in at Stanford within the CS track or within the CS major, um, and there has never been ever a security track for undergrads to study. There's a grad track. But um, a big part of what people have been pushing for, at least within my security team is Stanford is outputting some of the best software engineers, some of the best engineers in Silicon Valley. These people will be doing grand things in their life. They need to know at least how to write secure code. And a lot of my friends are doing their first ah, software engineering internships and no one is writing code manually anymore. Everyone is literally just using Claude upon Claude upon Claude, which is great in terms of, of fast output, but a lot of people I think don't really know the code that they're writing. And so if you don't even have this push for people to learn security, these big people that are going to be writing code that I guess they don't even fully understand and will end up leading big companies, their code bases are going to be so insecure. And I feel like it's unfortunate that Stanford doesn't I guess acknowledge this more publicly. But this is something that I think more, I think this needs to be more fundamental within the CS core of any major at any school. Like, I think more people need to be thinking about security, um, in the context especially because ah, just AI is writing everything these days and people actually genuinely need to understand the code that is being written. Um, so yeah, yeah, security is a huge issue and I think it's honestly just getting bigger and bigger and I think big, big companies like Anthropic are working on this right now. But it's, there's just so much AI generated code that is being written now and I don't know if it can be caught up, up in time to catch all these bugs, to be honest.

Speaker B: Yeah. And the rate at which code is being created now is astounding.

Speaker C: So fast.

Speaker B: So we're going to have to go back through all the code that's been being generated today once we have the advanced stuff. And we're going to have to essentially have the Band aid solution that goes through and finds the stuff. It sounds like your, uh, company, the product that they're building is um, already doing that to an extent. It's trying to catch it at the PR level. Um, but, but a lot of stuff will be closed source until it kind of gets opened up or it'll just remain closed source and people will figure out ways of identifying these things without even looking at the code base, just like poking around in the system and they're going to find these vulnerabilities and people are going to get pwned.

Speaker C: Yeah. It honestly feels like a Band Aid on top of this really, really big issue. I think if engineers are more pushed to learn basic security, at least in their undergrad classes, um, whatever school they end up working at. Right. Or if companies even push for their engineers to take security courses, this could be quite good. You don't even have to know the crazy things as long as you know the basics. Um, I think this could really help in terms of people writing software that's, that's really important to like the foundations of a lot of the industry. Right. Um, but I just don't see that push right now and I think that's something that should happen.

Speaker B: Freecodecamp is definitely emphasizing security a lot. I, uh, mean, we definitely want people to understand and appreciate the very bare minimum, like the OWASP type stuff, but also just have that mindset. Uh, I mean hackathons are great, but are there hackathon like red team, blue team type hackathons as well? Uh, at Stanford, do you all have other events like that that people could participate in?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Uh, we don't. This is something that we're actually working on right now. Uh, I don't know if you've ever heard of a capture the flag before. Yeah, a ctf. Yeah, yeah. So ctf I think are becoming increasingly more popular and this is actually something that I, that I. This like a tiny bit of a tangent. I think if people are interested in, interested in cs, I think it's very hard to get a CS job right now in the market. I Think if you go to a big school, you're gonna be fine. But I think if you go to like a smaller school, like community college, it's really hard in my opinion, to get like a software engineering degree. Um, just with all the, all the changes that are happening within the AI field. I think security is something that like, you don't have to go to a big school to do. I think a lot of it is like practical knowledge. And so something that I did last summer was get like a security certification. Um, if you feel like you're in the space where you're really worried about job stability. I think security is something that is very approachable from any lens. You don't install something like research or you have to go to a big school for that. A lot of it is just honestly practical knowledge. Um, but anyways, yes, captcha. The flags are something that have become really popular and basically what a capture flag is. You, um, you're given little puzzles and challenges that you have to basically hack into systems or either do crypto things or you have to, um, there's a bunch of different things that you do with capture the flags, but basically you're trying to capture some sort of flag. So some sort of flag is hidden in some sort of system and you either have to do something security related to get that flag out. And so this is something that I recommend to people when they're first learning security, uh, is to do capture the flag. Um, there are. I participate in red team, blue team competitions in college. Um, this is something that I think most other schools have, uh, not just Stanford. And if there isn't one, people should start one. Uh, but I think it's been really fun. Uh, the pen testing competition, the red teaming competition that I'm part of. Um, it's really fun. We just hack into systems and then people, uh, will try to defend their systems. And you get rankings and you get points for it and you end up going to big competitions, you get to travel. It's really fun. And I love security for the reason that it just feels so gamified. It's fun that you get a hack into this thing. Uh, the competitions that I do, they're legit teams of red teamers that are trying to get into your system. It feels cool. There are actual professionals shaping this event and you get to learn so much about what the actual industry is like in terms of penetration testing and, uh, defense.

Speaker B: I imagine the feedback loop is a lot tighter than trying to bring a product to market. And then you see, yes, we'll actually care and stuff. You're actually directly trying to break into a system, and you're either breaking into that or you're not. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you're, like, getting, like. That's why I think, uh, you're using this term gamified. Like, it feels like kind of like you're playing a game, right?

Speaker C: Um, actually, definitely does. Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, so I have one last question for you. You mentioned, like, hey, if people want, uh, to get like a, A red team, blue team competition or some sort of capture the flags competition, or even just a hackathon going on at their school, at their company, if they're like, hey, we need to raise awareness of security, um, concepts, or, hey, we need to raise awareness. Like, something I'm a big advocate of is getting people to actually use LLM tools and not just write them off. Because I, you know, use them two and a half years ago and they weren't very good. And I used them a year ago and they still weren't very good.

Speaker C: But.

Speaker B: But if you use them now, they're pretty good. They're phenomenal, right?

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah. And they're getting better and better, and I feel like so many people haven't given them a chance lately, and they're doing themselves a disservice because they could be getting a lot more done. Uh, shout out to Mukesh Mohapatra on the FreeCodeCame team, who recently wrote a book that's free on AI assistant assisted development. I'll, uh, put a link to that in the description. But, like, let's say hypothetically, somebody's trying to just get. Raise awareness at their company or at their school, trying to get other people to take security seriously, trying to get people to take, like, LLM code, gen tools seriously, things like that, or whatever it is that they're interested in. They want to organize some such event. Having just organized, along with some other awesome people on your team who I get to talk to, uh, Treehacks, like, what advice would you give to somebody if they had to start from scratch and, like, try to get a hackathon going at their institution?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I feel very lucky about Treehacks as, like, this massive event and the infrastructure and the foundations for the event were built on before I even came to Stanford. Right. So I feel like I inherited this thing and I got to make it slightly better the year after. But it is scary, I think, to start off with something new. Um, I think a big part of the tips that I've been telling Other hackathon organizers is there's a few foundations to a hackathon. You want to make sure that you have a few prizes, you have a few tracks that people can compete in, and you really just want to give people all the resources and support to make whatever that they want to build possible. I think it's a big part of Treehacks. And our mission is that, um, we fly you out here and we give you unlimited snacks and food and resources and sponsors and connections and community, and you can literally build whatever you want within those 36 hours that you can code. Um, I think that is the most pure vision of any hackathon and I think that is the core, the core mission that people should stick to. Um, and so if you're fundraising for the first time, I mean, just reaching out to local companies is always really important. Um, and I think, uh, one project, I think there's a lot of different guides on organizing hackathons that I would recommend. Uh, looking up. Um, I think MLH is major league hacking. They're a big hackathon organizing support. Um, and if they're non profit, not. But they're a great company to talk about. Um, but one thing in particular for me that I've learned a lot while organizing events like this is it's the human part of organizing that is the best part of it. And what I mean by that is, yes, I did all these great things. Uh, we interviewed Sam Altman at Treehacks and we had all these really big sponsors come and we had robot fighting and llamas and all these great things, and we flew out all these people. But my favorite part of organizing any event is always just interacting with people. Talking with the hackers, I think is always, always my favorite part of the event. And, um, before Treehacks had any of this big budget, I mean, we also started off, I feel like, pretty small. And, uh, for the fun events at Treehacks, we have pretty grand things now. But before, we used to have no budget. I remember, uh, before we had llamas the year prior, we had literally no budget for any of the fun things. And what we ended up doing is we would rally up all the dogs from all the grad students around here and we'd bring them to Treehouse and that was like doggy hour. Right. That didn't require any money. Right. Um, and that was still something that a lot of people got joy out of. A tradition at Treehacks is to do a lightsaber battle. So we have big steps, um, down into the building. And what we'll do is we'll buy like the most cheap lightsabers. Like they break basically on impact, but they're like $100 and you get so many of them and, and people don't care. They don't care. They just like fighting with lightsabers. Right. So I think whenever people are trying to build really grand scale events like this, it's the tiny things like that that I think matter a lot. And you don't need a big budget in order to make these things happen. Uh, for a long time, Treehacks operated on making these really fun events happen without really any grand scale budget or anything like that. And so I think just interacting with hackers from an organizer perspective is tremendously important. I remember this year we spent a lot of money on food to feed all our hackers and snacks. Um, there was, uh, I think us directors ordered pizza right before our keynote with Sam Altman, and we had leftover cold Domino's pizza. And I remember I walked around that night as hackers first started funneling into the building and I was just handing out pizza and their reactions were like, oh my gosh, Domino's pizza. This is exactly what I wanted. That cost us m. Like almost nothing to buy this pizza. But just interacting with hackers and giving them out this cold pizza literally brought them so much joy. And this is what I mean. You do not need anything big in order to build community at these hackathons. And I think community is absolutely the biggest part. Um, you just need to pour your time and your effort and your passion and you really just want to build connections and you don't need anything grand scale to make that happen. Um, so that's my tip for organizers and in terms of, um, kind of raising awareness about security, uh, one major part, I think people talk about it, but no one really truly understands how bad it is unless you actually experience it. Um, there's, I mean, being at Stanford, I am very much exposed to all the AI stuff that's been happening using AI agents and using Claude. This all just comes normally to me because this is the ecosystem that I'm going to school in. But whenever I go back home, no one knows what Claude is. No one knows about any AI generated, uh, code tools. And so what I will do is I will just pull up Claude and I'll be like, I'll tell Claude, make this website for me and I will see their reactions, be like, this exists. This is crazy. Um, I think it's just really cool to just, I think People are very intimidated by these tools, and that's very valid. I think I was also very intimidated to begin with, to be honest, and now I feel very comfortable with them. M. But just showing people the grand scale of the things that these tools can help you build and improving and helping your life be more efficient is, Is really awesome. I had a friend, um, at another university, and his lab never used any AI tools. And I just told him about Claude and Cursor, and they used it for the first time and they bought, I think, Claude Pro for every single person within that lab. And it's just like it totally changed their efficiency. Um, so, yeah, I would just recommend just showing people just the awesome things that these tools can help you build. And now people don't have to be like, bogged up with all the basic code writing. I think people should still learn the fundamentals of programming. But Vibe coding exists now. Basically, you can make anything, like any idea that you have come to life because of these tools. And that is so awesome. And I love that we're in that stage of CS now.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, I just want to kind of coast on what you just said. I strongly encourage people to learn the fundamentals. Ricocamp will teach you the fundamentals. There, uh, are great books, uh, if you get a chance to go to Stanford, uh, hit up one of Rachel's C, uh, classes. But, um, uh, these tools are so incredibly powerful and they can save you so much time and energy. Like with hackathons. It's incredible for projects that come out of hackathons now versus a few years ago, where the level of polish, the, the number, the scale of the ambition that you can achieve when you can just have some agents write the code for you and you can focus on the higher level architecture and stuff like that, and you know how to fix the agent code, you know how to kind of keep it on the, like from going off into the weeds and doing dumb things. You, uh, know how to like, figure out a way to like, make it relatively secure, which is not really that big of a deal with a hackathon, because most of these projects, frankly, are not going to be sustained after like, I guess that's a, A final. Quick question. I know I said final question. How many of the projects from, uh, Treehacks do you think are still operating? Like, were there any that you were like, wow, that was really impressive. That's gonna, like, the team's gonna continue to work on it.

Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. I think one special thing about Treehouse. Well, just because we are in Silicon Valley. A lot of. There's just a lot of startup influence here. Right? I think a lot of, uh, when we. When we were thinking about Treehouse and developing it just a few months ago, a big question for us is, do we want more of the startup space to have not control over Treehouse? I guess the word control and infiltrate sound very negative, but do we want to have more influence from these spaces? Do we want to allow venture capitalists to have, I don't know, to talk more with Treehacks people? Um, I think for us, this is important because I think a lot of people want to build companies out of some projects that they've built from hackathons. But I think the core part of Treehacks is we just want people to build really cool projects. And the engineering innovation is so important. And if you want to pursue a company afterwards, totally cool, we will give you the resources to do that. But we just want people to genuinely build cool projects and innovate cool things. Um, ah, there are some people that I met at the hackathon that are actually trying to fundraise right now for projects that they were working on, and it's really awesome. We have a few sponsors that can definitely help out with that. Um, we even had Y Combinator Office hours was one of the projects prizes that you could win. Um, so I think, at least within Treehacks, I haven't gone to many other hackathons, there's a big push for whatever you end up building, potentially becoming a startup idea. Um, but, yeah, I know some people that have started already fundraising for projects that. I mean, Treehacks was. It was literally a month ago, and people made really awesome projects and now they're trying to build something real out of it. And it's awesome.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Well, it sounds like a huge win. Everybody. Check out my documentary on Treehacks, which will have come out by the time this goes live. Uh, I'll link it in the description. Uh, Rachel, thank you so much for giving us so much of your time. I know you're very busy teaching and working in security, and of course it's still attending classes, trying to finish school. Uh, yeah, it's very inspiring to talk to somebody like you who just, uh, has your level of ambition, but is also just like, super chill. Uh, and, uh, yeah, like, you're very easy to talk to. And, uh, I feel like you're like, super down to earth. And, uh, yeah, like, thanks for all the, uh, guidance you provided us for, you know, ourselves and potentially for our kids as they navigate, you know, a pretty, uh, competitive future. Things are not easy out there. They're not going to get any easier. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Krissy Mai. I, like, really genuinely enjoyed this. It was great chatting and I'm so happy that I was able to do this. This. Yeah, anytime. Anytime. Thank you.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks again, everybody. Well, until next week, happy coding.