The concept
My culminating project for a fullstack development course: a wellness journal that tracked how weather impacts your mood. Open the app, tap how you’re feeling, write a bit. Quick, no friction. Behind the scenes, it pulled weather data from the OpenWeather API and stored everything locally, mapping against your entries over time.
Building and defending it
We pitched, developed from scratch, hit milestones for backend and frontend, then defended everything in a technical interview. Our professor would ask us to modify features in real time while explaining our thought process. Intimidating at first, but it ended up being one of my favourite courses. There’s something clarifying about having to prove you actually understand what you built.
What showed up in the data
Watching patterns emerge was the best part. Seasonal depression becomes incredibly obvious when you see your mood dip in perfect sync with winter’s arrival. The app wasn’t trying to fix anything. It just reminded people that their environment matters, that what they’re feeling isn’t happening in a vacuum.
The technical interview went well. More than that, I proved to myself I was capable. Super proud of this one.