My Experience at the Kode with Klossy Scholars Camp 2019

Hi everyone! In mid-June, I got to attend a Kode with Klossy Scholarship Camp. For those of you who are not familiar with what that is, it is a two-week intensive FREE coding camp created by supermodel, Karlie Kloss, for girls between ages 13 and 18. It was established in 2015 and was only available to three cities in the U.S.. However, since then, it has expanded to 25 cities in the U.S..

I actually found out about the scholarship program when I was watching an interview between Karlie Kloss and Emma Chamberlain on YouTube. I knew who Karlie Kloss was, but I didn’t know that she had created such an amazing program. I found the Kode with Klossy (KWK) instagram and decided to take a look at the application, and thankfully, there was a camp in Miami.

When you apply to the program, you are given two options: web development or app development. I chose to apply to the web development course, as it is a bit more challenging than the app development course… and I wanted to challenge myself this summer.

The application asks you why you want to attend the course and two other questions (which I’m pretty sure change every year); mine was “What do you think is the greatest invention of all time and why?”.

After March 31st, the wait began. I finally got the email that I had been accepted on May 1st. I was so excited to attend the camp but a little nervous because I thought it was going to be something really hard for me.

I have been taking computer science courses at school since my freshmen year. Even though I had three years of experience in coding, you do NOT need to have ANY experience going into the camp, which is amazing. The KWK web development course primarily focused on three coding languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Those three languages are what make up a website, like the one you’re reading this article on. Even though I had learned about basic web development at school, it paled in comparison to what I learned coming out of camp.

The camp took place at a WeWork in Downtown Miami. WeWork bought a beautiful old bank and converted it into an amazing workspace where anyone can become a member and work there.

Like I mentioned before, the camp was completely free. We had an amazing catering service that brought us lunch and snacks. Additionally, since Karlie Kloss has so many connections to other brands, we got a lot of cool products, like a reusable waterbottle, perfume, lotion, stickers, etc.

On the first day of camp, I got to meet all of the other girls (there were approximately 18 of us) and they were all so nice! People from all over Miami came to this camp, as well as some people from out of the state, and even the country! The instructors were also so nice and smart! We had two teachers, Joel and Kyla, and two teaching assistants, Angie and Caroline. Angie attends Duke and Caroline attends NYU, so in addition to them helping us code, I also got some amazing advice for applying to college, college life, etc.

Over the next two weeks, I learned SO much and had SO much fun!! Throughout those weeks, you learn certain aspects of a website so that in the last week, you can start building your own website (omg!). I was partnered up with two other girls to build a website in 2 days (which is not a lot of time)… but once we finished strategizing on what we were going to make, it actually went by really fast (camp is from 9 AM to 5 PM)! We put so much hard work and thought in to making our website, and I’m really proud of it (I mean, we made a website FROM SCRATCH!!). Don’t be scared by the hours of the camp… there were plenty of brain breaks and snacks!

On the last day (demo day), we got to FaceTime Karlie Kloss (omg!!). She talked to us and said some really inspiring words. We then got to present our websites to our family and friends. It was so inspiring to see all of the other groups’ projects and all of the effort put into each detail of their websites.

All in all, I highly recommend that you apply to this program if you are interested in pursuing computer science as a career or if you just want to learn something new in the summer. It’s so easy to apply to this program so you might as well just do it! You'll make amazing friendships with the other scholars and the instructors. I had the most amazing two weeks at this program and I’m very proud of myself for making a website. I included the link below to my website so that you can check it out!

https://bellachaviano.github.io/final-project/

Above is a screenshot from Karlie Kloss's Instagram story when she was FaceTiming us!

Below is a picture of me explaining the code of our website.