AfterGrad

Inspiration

There is no stressful time in a young adult's life like the time after graduation. The new grad is thrown into full independence and relentless job search which can be very taxing on the mind and body. For soon-to-be and recent grads, it is a challenging experience to not find your place in the world because you can't find your first job, or first apartment, or file your taxes on your own. Being a recent grad myself, I've seen this process first-hand and know that it is easy to slip into depression or discouragement, especially with the current economy and politics. This inspired me to create a hub for grads to connect and support each other.

What it does

AfterGrad is a community app for soon-to-be and recent grads to connect, to offer support and to skill swap with each other. The user can create an account, log in and start interacting with other users through Huddle Rooms for public chats, or through the Peers page to find connections and pair up for collaboration. On the Home screen, the user keeps track of his own tasks and interview calendar. The overall experience of the app is supposed to give the user a sense of belonging and keep him connected to his peers to avoid discouragement during job search.

How we built it

AfterGrad was built with Bolt, it uses Netlify for deployment and Supabase for user authentication and storage.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenges were the aesthetics of the app, I needed to iterate the design a few times before getting an acceptable result from Bolt. Also, the functionality is crucial for a community app, so making sure that the features worked properly was another big challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that I created this app within two days. I did not think that Bolt can handle the complexity of the features I wanted for the app, so I hesitated in making it, but once I started iterating through prompts, I realize it is feasible.

What we learned

I learned to not stack features in prompts and just take it one step at a time. The app should be built only with the core functionality at the start, and then slowly develop it without breaking its parts. Knowing that I can actually get it to work is the best part, even though I am non-technical, I built confidence in my ability to create a prototype of a working app.

What's next for AfterGrad

I would like to publish AfterGrad to the app store, and add more features to make it more useful for the grad community. I will add a calling feature so users can huddle in together over tea, and later I would like to add mentorship drop-ins from professionals in the field who are willing to volunteer their time to help the upcoming young professionals.