A new take on multitasking
You’ve heard of hackers, you’ve heard of the CoHo and you’ve probably heard of “Coho Hacks.” But what you probably haven’t heard of is a combination of the three. My job today is to explain what any of that means.
Commonly, when people refer to CoHo hacks, what they mean to say is “I’ve figured out a way to cheat the school of money” (I’m not here to get into the ethics of it). But I’m guessing what you’ve never realized is that the CoHo actually hosts an annual hackathon for students to battle their love of all things stressful in an environment that probably doesn’t need any more chaos added to it. The CoHo Hackathon is an event in which students eager to show that they took a CS10 class are required to do whatever you do in hackathons — all while waiting in line for their food.
The thing is, you’ve probably never noticed this because it doesn’t look any different than any other extremely overwhelming encounter you might have had at the CoHo. If you’ve ever stood in the vicinity of a student frantically typing on their computer, drinking a Redbull and standing somewhere inconvenient, you may have inadvertently been a part of the CoHo Hackathon. And let me tell you — there’s more to this event than anything you can probably wrap your non-hacker brain around.
Not surprisingly, this event has seemed to polarize the Davis community, like everything else in this school. There are two sides to every story, and this event specifically seemed to have both of them.
“I just think it’s a really cool way of integrating a high-stress environment with another high-stress environment,” one student said.
“I just don’t know why this school has to always do things like this,” said another student who wasn’t participating.
But regardless of whether or not you are a hackathon supporter… well actually, it doesn’t matter what you think because it’s happening anyway.
Many people are confused how this event started, but most people don’t care. Origin stories can be tricky, but after asking three different people, I came to understand a central theme: the CoHo. From there, I was able to deduce that this event was created by CoHo employees one winter morning (important detail) when they told an eager student that the best CoHo hack of all was programming software while trying to find silverware or drinking coffee while writing JavaScript (if that’s the correct terminology). From then, the hackathon spread like a virus and the possibilities became endless, prompting Davis students to push the boundaries of both technology and, most importantly, the students around them.
I thank the CoHo employees for gracing our school with such a beloved tradition that all the tour guides will be sure to touch on as they lead swarms of fourth-graders through the CoHo at lunch time. So, please, I urge of you: While members of the CoHo eat lunch at their communal table, go up to them and ask what they have planned for the next annual hackathon. It’s the least you can do.
Written by: Rosie Schwarz — rschwarz@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
