# @thehuronemery on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Caiv0lIu7qw
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/20495926-thehuronemery-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/95e58da36a.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-03-01T01:33:46.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Emery (@TheHuronEmery) — https://gondola.cc/TheHuronEmery

## Caption

After a month's delay in the results, on Feb. 3, Rep. Debbie Dingell named Huron computer science students Aarnav Unadkat, Anthony Varkey and Peter Schwendeman as winners of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 12th District. This year, 7,174 students registered for the event.

Crafting initial ideas of a time capsule or a note-taking app, the trio brainstormed their submission on a Discord call. Eventually Unadkat proposed an idea which he felt most high school students could relate to, leading to the development of Quillink—an app designed to provide objective writing feedback in an easily accessible format.

“A lot of people don't have friends or other people that they can depend on to help them with writing,” Varkey said. “We thought that this would be a good idea to make it more open, so that anybody can submit something they've written and somebody else can try and help them, which is a very productive ecosystem.”

The group also ran the web application team for Huron Business Professionals of America (BPA) last year, giving them background experience on this current project. 

“Peter and Tony were kind of like the masterminds of the code while I was able to like work on the front end,” Unadkat said. “I helped with a lot of the design while Peter and Tony were able to make sure that the database and the server were up to date.”

For the group, the announcement came with suspense and shock. 

“I didn't think we were going to actually win,” Varkey said. “There are a lot of features in this, and it was definitely not what we originally thought it was gonna be like at the end.”

In late April, the three will demo their app as part of the #HouseofCode festival in the U.S. Capitol Building. 

“We just started talking about which Congress people we want to meet, who we want to talk to and what we want to do in D.C.,” Unadkat said. “But it was really fun. We had a great time discussing what we would do from here. We had some hypotheticals on how we would use this to become president in a few years.”

Unadkat laughed at that thought.

“It was pretty shocking,” Unadkat said. “But a win is a win.”

Reporting by Vish Gondesi

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## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Emery | @TheHuronEmery | https://gondola.cc/TheHuronEmery | Publisher |
| Sandra Fu | @s6ndra | https://gondola.cc/s6ndra | Graphic Designer |

## Tags

houseofcode

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