The Week That Was : September 1 - 8, 2018
Sept 1, 2018:
On the night of September 1st, I received an email from Rethink Foundation that the list of the students selected for the cohort 1 of the WIT learning was published on the website of the Learning program.
For those who haven’t heard of the program. WIT or Women In Tech is a 4 -week learning program for female engineering students, designed by Rethink Foundation to equip the students to leverage the various Women in Tech opportunities.
I didn’t have any hope that I could make it to the group of 30 students for the program. I decided to check the list on the site. I was really surprised and happy to find my name amongst the selected students. That day I went to bed with a smile.
Sept 5, 2018:
Today was Teachers’ Day. We had a small celebration in the college for the Teachers. There was also another speciality for the day. Mr. Chikku Abraham, HOD of the Basic Science Department informed me that Arya Murali (Program anchor of WIT and lead of the Opportunity Project at Rethink) would be visiting our college to address the female students of the ECE, EEE and CSE branches about the WIT program.
The program started around 4 pm. Arya told the crowd the stories of many of the previous scholarship winners as well as her own experience.She made us realize the fact that we too would be able to apply and get these scholarships . As a first step towards applying for various scholarships Arya encouraged students to apply for the WIT. I am happy to say that her talk has inspired many of students ,who were earlier reluctant , to apply for the program.
At the end of the talk I was asked to say about my experience applying to the WIT program and propose the vote of thanks. I became really tensed to address the crowd in front of Arya, a role model I look up to. I don’t even remember what I said but as I ended my speech Arya told it was a heartwarming thanks and that, my friends, made my day.
Today was also the day we received our task of the WIT program. It was to make a quick video introducing ourselves and speaking about our interest, projects and so on.The video was to be posted on our own YouTube Channel.
Sept 6, 2018:
Today an Open house held to help us with creating the video.The open house was held from 7 PM to 8 PM. The open house was arrange in appear. appear.in is a video collaboration tool that lets us have video conversations effortlessly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the Open House due to some other works I was committed to.
While preparing for the draft for the video I got to experience what everyone called Writer’s Block. I had many things to say but didn’t know what to say. I had to take many retakes of the video to get one that is somewhat presentable. At last I was able to make post the video though I faced a network issue. The consoling fact was that it was the first draft and I will be able to improve the quality of my presentation through this program.
Sept 8, 2018:
Today we received our second task in the program. We were asked to join the telegram group of the participants , launch our own personal website and to post a TWTW for the past week.
I was able to launch my very first website using google sites. The link of the same is shared: https://sites.google.com/view/elsamariageorge/home
It was a really wonderful experience trying my hand at creating a website and writing my very first TWTW.
Looking forward to the activities arranged for next week.