Mithra Perera

Mithra, like many in tech, didn’t begin with dreams of coding as a career. At first, he was dead set on becoming a medical professional. He wanted to help people in order to find meaning in his work. But as he realized he wasn’t truly passionate about health care, he made the last minute switch to Electrical Engineering. The path aligned with his interests, and still gave him the ability to make things that help people. But such a major switch in interest, after sticking to a specific study for so long, didn’t come easily.

Moving away from home to go to university was a massive life change that uprooted Mithra’s support system. He didn’t have the friends or family nearby to lean on when he realized that the EE degree he had switched to wasn’t for him. His dreams of building were replaced with strict math, theory, and physics. Mithra fell into a funk, disheartened by his path, and fell out of the program. But he fought the funk, and landed an internship while steadily improving his grades and creating a new support system.

Things were starting to look up, but Mithra still hadn’t found his passion. Eventually, he found that passion at his first hackathon. During his time at a second internship, a friend invited him to join their hackathon team during the first summer of COVID-19. They had the express goal of building something to help with the pandemic. Mithra joined the team, learned about Figma design, and built the prototype that led to their team’s win. From then on, he knew that he had a new passion in learning to code. It’s just his first year as a hacker, but he knows that it won’t be his last.

At a later hackathon, cuHacking, Mithra felt his support system grow even further when he met a fellow hacker than took him into their team with open arms. With the team, Mithra worked to build a website used to collect data from multiple devices in sync in order to give scientific labs a better integration system and data collection method. Mithra’s eyes were opened to the potential of pi thanks to the team’s use of raspberry pi and the mentorship of his new friend. The team extended the project to two different labs in Ottawa that had plans to utilize the site. Seeing the immediate real world implications of his own work was the greatest reward.

Mithra had a unique experience when it came to discovering what he wanted to do. It took fully immersing himself in a program, such as the robotics club or the electrical engineering courses, to realize when a path was not for him. Repeat misfires led to him feeling lonely, depressed, and unmotivated. MLH hackathons are what gave him the drive to work as hard as he could to pull himself out of the rut he was in. With a new lease on life, new passion, and new motivation, he had the curiosity to learn and build that makes every day important. His full-time work as an engineer and student is challenging, but he’s more than content. By the time graduation comes along, Mithra will have participated in at least ten hackathons. He can’t wait to continue to participate to the best of his abilities and even mentor soon enough.

A believer in the power of pressure, Mithra thrives in hackathon environments. The personal and educational change that he has enacted in himself has come from high pressure situations that force him to learn something new. Beyond learning different technologies, he has also been given the opportunity to learn the variety of types of people. By working with teams of strangers, he was forced to break out of his comfort zone. It took practice at first, but it comes with ease now. This collaboration and adaptability will follow him into his future career.

A recent goal of Mithra’s is to organize a hackathon. As a relatively new hacker, he hasn’t had the opportunity yet, but he has big dreams. From the beginning, the excitement with which he spoke about hackathons to his friends has inspired others to join him, both in his team or in separate events altogether. Seeing this ability to get others interested who were never previously interested gave him the hope to put his networking skills to the test as an organizer. His love for hackathons and desire to pay it forward will continue to spread no matter what stage of life he is in.

The route Mithra has followed has not been without its bumps. He was spiraling in a search to find a purpose, but he didn’t give up. Instead, he picked himself up, cleaned himself off, and found hacking. This new healthy obsession gave Mithra a passion. From now on, Mithra will never count himself out, and neither will his peers.