TWTW- Week 2, September 2018
A detailed overview of the activities of week 2 of WIT learning program.
An awesome week that was…
As we were almost done with week 1, on Monday, I got a sudden feeling that it is good to talk out loud about our aspirations because it will push us to work for achieving it every day. I shared this thought in the telegram group with the rest of the cohort 1 participants and Arya. I understood that many people from cohort 1 were going through the same thought process. Arya helped us understand the benefits of talking fearlessly about our dreams!
Key take aways from the discussion, It is always good to talk out loud about your aspirations because:
- It will always be at the back of the mind of people you share it with and tomorrrow when they find something related to your aspiration, there is every possibility that they will let you know about it.
- It also works well in terms of us internalising our aspirations. While we may be absolutely clueless about whether or not we will get there, talking out loud about them helps us also get closer to that reality, first in our own head and then in reality itself.
On Tuesday I received a mail from Arya, calling the entire cohort 1 for the second week of activities. All of us were asked to come online at 7 p.m on the telegram group for the one hour long activity #discover.
We were asked to set a twitter account before the activity. I had mine already working. Other than that, we had no idea what the activity would be. I decided to discover #discover at 7 p.m ;)
The activity started off at 7 p.m. All of us were asked to mark our attendance using the rethink bot by typing /discover. Everyone came online at exact seven. Then Arya revealed the activity!
Welcome #task3 ;)
We were asked to discover 3 opportunities in 15 minutes, limiting to Women in Tech. After discovery, we were supposed to tweet about it by adding the twitter handle of rethinkcollect in cc.
The three opportunities that I discovered:
- Adobe India Women in Technology scholarship.
- Startup weekend women in Cochin.
- One million women to tech summer of code.
We were asked to submit screenshots of our tweet in the group after it was done. I could successfully complete the task in the given amount of time.
In the next 5 minutes we were asked to do some reflection, to state any quick realisation from the activity.
Key take aways from the activity:
- We just need to sit at home and google to find opportunities. Opportunities are just a click away!
- Combined effort can do wonders. We are a bunch of 23 girls and each discovered 3 opportunity so in total we have around 60 opportunities discovered in less that 15 minutes!!
- Time management — We always talk about this, but now I am going through a really good training process to make it practical in my life.
- Everyone likes to look good. It is always the small things that matter (reference to tagging @adobe in my tweet).
After that, each of us were asked to do two things:
- Select 2 opportunities to work towards and update it on the wiki page.
- Pick 2 program coaches, also update it on the wiki page.
And the deadline was the next day at 7 p.m.
After a bit of research I chose We Tech Qualcomm scholarship and Adobe India WIT scholarship. I decided to choose Sethu Sathyan and Ayushi Mrigen as my program coaches. Sethu, because I got to know that she conducts classes on Actions on Google which I found interesting recently and also because she is one of the GHC scholarship reviewer. I also chose Ayushi because she is an Adobe WIT scholar and also because she is a googler! I updated my choice on the wiki page as well. That’s the link to the WIT learning program cohort 1 wiki page,
On Thursday, at 7 p.m, we had a follow up activity. All of us appeared exactly at 7 and tried to mark our attendance with the bot. But unfortunately the bot wasn’t responding due to some server error, so we had to mark our attendance in the group.
Now, we had to narrow down to one opportunity from the 2 selected opportunities.
Arya used her judgement from talking to us in matching us with the opportunity that we picked. She matched me with Adobe India WIT scholarship.
Some girls were asked to choose a different opportunity than which was listed.
Later, we were asked to create a wiki page or update the already existing page for the chosen opportunity.
Benefits of making the wiki page:
- We do our research and our understanding about the program increases.
- We also make a contribution that helps everyone else by publishing all these information.
Here is the link to know all about creating a wiki page:
Now we have picked the coaches, let the coaches pick us ;)
It was upon us to write to our preferred coaches and get selected by them.
The deadline to send the emails was on the same day.
We were also asked to have an appear session of around 15 minutes with the selected coaches by the end of this week.
And this one-on-one session with the selected mentor will happen every week.
We were asked to send mails by cc-ing v@r and always click on reply all while responding to mails.
Arya gave us enough guidelines on the code-of-conduct to be kept while sending email to the coaches.
I sent emails to both Ayushi and Sethu requesting them to be my mentors in the program.
To my surprise both of them replied positively. I was so happy to have both of them as my mentors, but then we could only choose one! I really had a tough decision to make. Since I had a short interaction with Sethu on twitter I was more comfortable with having her as my coach in the program. I discussed the issue in the group and asked Arya for help.
“Sometimes it helps to listen to your brain and not your heart!”
I decided to choose Ayushi Mrigen as my coach since my choice of opportunity was Adobe India scholarship and I informed them about my decision by writing to them.
We got scheduled to have our first appear call on Friday at 7 p.m as stated in the wiki page. Mridula Pillai and I were scheduled to appear in the same room as Ayushi, since she was the program coach for both of us. Mridula and I appeared together but we couldn’t find Ayushi. We made use of this session to get to know each other well. We talked for about 15 minutes.
By 7.15 we kept the call and decided to drop a mail to Ayushi asking her for her availability during this week. But, Ayushi sent a mail saying that she is available for a call at 7.30. Mridula was outside, so I went in to attend the call with Ayushi. It was a wonderful session. Here is the link to the details of the call:
The second part of #task4 asks us to update a wiki page linked to the opportunity that we chose. I added an application walk-through and details of each essay question to Adobe India scholarship wiki page.
During this week I also met SKG and Arya Murali in person. I’ll be covering how it happened, where it happened and also about the key take aways of the meetup in the next article!
Wow! I’m definitely learning a lot from WIT Learning program. By the end of week 2, I have a lot of take aways:
- Always stay on top of your emails.
- Time management — more stressed.
- Learned a lot about making decisions — choosing Ayushi.
- Writing #TWTW is very much beneficial. It helps you in introspection.
And a lot of other take aways including the ones that I have previously mentioned in the article.
At the end I would like to thank my friend, Joel Vilanilam Zachariah for being supportive enough and handling FOSSMEC, when I was caught up with work. You are doing a great job man :’)
