By Shehzan Devani
The last question in our application for the MakerSquare coding program is “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Most of the application is in a serious tone, so that we can find the students that have a real motivation to learn web development. However, to keep the application light-hearted and fun, we put this question into the final application, and we’ve been getting the most extraordinary responses. We meant for the question to lighten the mood and just be a joke, but our applicants have been comparing the chicken’s journey to their own. Here are a few of the answers:
- “Why must we always question the motivations of the chicken? He was either heading towards something or running away from something else… and isn’t that all anyone is ever really doing?”
- “One hot summer day, Chicken was walking down Main street, daydreaming about Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS and JavaScript when suddenly, across the street she saw a bright big neon sign that said “LEARN TO PROGRAM IN 10 WEEKS”. She was so excited she nearly dropped her bag of groceries! After looking both ways, she ran across the street as fast as she could and barreled through the front door… They then handed over a short questionnaire for her to take and told her that the first class would start as soon as she was done filling it out. Chicken filled out the forms as fast as she could, turned them in and hopped happily into the classroom to pursue her dream of becoming a programmer.”
- “The chicken crossed the road because everything on her side was un-fresh and unexciting. There were no new corners to explore. She had picked at the rocks and could find no more earthworms to feed her imagination. In the past, she saw the road as something that held her back. But then she realized she could go forward if she really wanted to. And although she didn’t entirely know what existed on the other side, that’s what drew her to it.”
- “To pursue a great adventure at the farm across the street – one side of the road for the rest of her life? BO-RING.”
- “Because that’s what he had to do to get to where he wanted to be.”
This question more than any other is showing me that our applicants have high expectations for us, and we’re up to the challenge! Moreover, learning web development is a big step in their lives and they highly value these skills. The motivation that we see from our applicants ties in perfectly with the viral video from http://www.code.org. We’re going all out for our students and we’ll make sure to get the chicken across the road, safe and sound.
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MakerSquare 
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get to the other si.