BSides is finally here, yay! And by that I mean, OMG WHAT AM I DOING I’M DYING HELP!

Last night I made this ultra cute mini science experiment board and instead of BSides I put BScience and turned the B part into an actual bumblebee. I wanted to do a quick one question survey because I needed data and I wasn’t trying to get a bunch of people at a cybersecurity event to scan random QR codes from someone they never met before so I had to design around that. I made it a trifold and I brought two of my kid’s self inking stamps so that people could answer in 2 seconds. Turns out they were doing a bingo type raffle game so a ton of people had stamps and a lot of them used their stamp so now my board has a bunch of animals instead of just flowers and Easter eggs.

Anytime I have to go out for something new with this startup I’ll take a pic with my kid’s board that says “First Day of X” so today’s said “First Day of BSides!” and it has my age and says I want to be a “Founder” when I grow up. I tried to have my friend take a pic with it too and he was like “This is like my nth time” and he was a speaker before and everything. LOL!

When we got there we got into the volunteer line and it turns out it wasn’t for the resume volunteers so then when I got into the main line they booted me because they couldn’t find me then I had to get into another line and they sorted it out. Somehow that felt just right because the universe likes to test me like “Are you sure you want to do this let’s make extra extra sure by having you jump through 7 more hoops just to get in here.”

Even though I was scared, because the outside is scary, everyone was so nice! A lot of people were really interested in my experiment and some people asked to take pics of it. Sure why not? Learning is fun!

I don’t know what happened but when I got to my volunteer resume slot they didn’t have a space for me so they had me sitting on the actual stage and helping people there. It said BSIDES in giant light up letters. I thought it was cute and the guy at the company I’m volunteering with took a pic of me with my fancy stage resume booth lolol. I used to have a sweet side gig matching people to open reqs. It was fun! I would help my friend’s fix their resumes and I get on calls with the recruiters to go over the reqs and the candidates so that I could ask for what they needed and also coach my friends on what to say sometimes. I’d even negotiate salary expectations so I could tell my friends what to say. I had a really high close rate because of that. Anyway I made these tiny cards that had a checklist of the most common issues I saw so that they could fix it and then I’d write a tiny note on the back with their name and I’d sign it.

I am NOT SUBTLE so I told like 10 people how my introvert ass anxiety level is like 10,000 but a lot of people here are probably in the same boat, so yeah.

When my volunteer shift was over I was like NOW WHAT and I was like UGH I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THIS AFTER PARTY THING AND I HATE IT BC I ALREADY HATE BEING OUTSIDE AND NOW I HAVE TO BE OUTSIDE AFTER HOURS UGHHHHHHHH. A different guy from the company I was volunteering with said, “Here I’ll be your wingman, you ready?” and he literally took me outside and hit up a random table and then we had a chat for a while and then he said he had to go back to his shift and left me there.

YO THOUGH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
Seriously.
I could cry.

Like without this guy I probably would have eventually gotten somewhere, but the fact that someone would do that for someone they just met that day to go out of their way so that he could help me with my work and meeting people.

I APPRECIATE YOU SO MUCH!!!!
T_T!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My life is scary but beautiful at the same time.

Badges acquired: 1
Votes obtained: Lots
Super fancy stage booth setups just for me: 1
Times I cried on the inside because someone went out of their way because I was anxious: 1