TWTW-Week 1, October 2018

The final week of WIT Learning Program :”) together with exams.

The five-week-long amazing journey is coming to an end. At the end of the fifth week, I have a bagful of experience and learnings. It truly was a Learning Program. In the beginning, I literally had no clue of what was going to happen. As we progressed through each week, Arya Murali used to bring in each activity as a surprise.

This week the activity had the theme #Apply, we had to apply to the scholarship opportunity- GHCI by filling out the google form shared in the Wiki page.

WIT-GHCI Scholarship - Rethink Wiki

The first four days of the week was quite hectic for me, with the exams coming on my way. We had two exams per day. I prepared very late for the exam as usual. The exams were better than I expected it to be.

Due to my exams, I couldn’t involve much on the WIT program. Nevertheless, I caught up with time. Although I made mistakes here and there, I learned a lot after that.

We had our zoom discussion on Thursday, where Arya Murali shared a lot of tips on how to go with our application.

Initially, we discussed the #connect activity. The main points are given below.

1. Address people on a first name basis- treat yourself as their peers.
2. Build genuine relationships.
3. Make them look good and feel good.
4. Always figure out something that adds value to them- What is in it for them?
5. Make things easier for them- like a handbook.

Then later we went on to discuss the #apply activity. The main points:

1. Know who they are looking for while applying.
2. Be genuine, Be you- don’t make up things but make up interesting angles.
3. Look for opportunities that you really fit in.
4. Tie your story with what they are looking for.
5. Be specific about your goals.
6. Use figures to support your answers.
7. Shitty First draft- Give yourself the permission to make mistakes. Write- go on and on and on…
8. Have your first version ready- iterate quickly.
9. Read the questions thoroughly- think about different angles.
10. Go through self-review, peer review and mentor review cycles.
11. Seek for critical feedbacks.
12. Hit that submit button!

On Saturday, I got to know that my friend Joel V Zachariah gave an amazing lightning speech at PyCon 2018- about the 6 types of people in Computer Science. I wasn’t surprised a bit about his confidence- because that is Joel. He is smart and confident :)

That is Joel giving the talk.

As part of the application, I had to do a twitter live talking about my figure it out journey as part of WIT Learning Program. I tried to go live, but it didn’t work out. Sometimes the app stopped working, other times the audio was not recorded. I searched online about it but got no solution. I was on it from the morning. I decided to have my breakfast only after finishing that out. Time passed by, nothing worked. I decided to record a video and then post it on twitter. So I recorded, but the video limit of twitter was only 2 minutes. I had to share a 5-week experience and it obviously exceeded the time limit. So I decided to upload it on youtube and tweet the link out.

I had sent an email to Sharmila Reddy Nangi requesting her to appear for an interview. She responded to it positively and hence the call happened successfully. I am so happy and thankful to her. She was cheerful and was ready to help us with anything she could do.

My application for the GHCI scholarship is still on progress.

Arya Murali had been an awesome program anchor. Not just a program anchor, she was actually a mentor to all of us. She helped us out in a number of ways whenever we got stuck. Sometimes she used to keep herself away from the group for us to figure out things on ourselves. I am really thankful to her for being the perfect support system. I could actually see a parent in her, I am not kidding. A parent doesn’t always find solutions to his/her kid’s queries, instead sometimes let them figure things out on themselves. That is exactly what she did with us. Thank you, Arya :)

I will definitely miss this program and the energy levels of the young aspiring ladies who came with me on this journey. It was something that pushed me to do my best each day. Whenever I felt low I looked at my peers, I saw them progressing, which served as a motivation to push myself through the deadlines successfully. If I got stuck, I figured out a way to get things done. That was exactly what all of us did throughout the program. Thanks to WIT Learning Program, a lot of self-improvement has happened in a month’s time.

I also got this happy news that my google assisstant bot Helpline Kerala was selected as one amongst the 12 fantastic actions to be showcased at Bangalore DevFest 2018. Still excited about that! GDG Bangalore even sponsored my flight tickets :)