What I learnt by listening!
#connect
It’s with great pleasure that I announce I am one among the 82 girls who got selected for the WITx program :)
WITx is a 2-week learning program which facilitates in equipping girls with the demanded skills and the confidence to leverage the various opportunities lying out there.
We are at week 1 of the program and is up with the #connect and #discover activities. The #connect activity focusses on recognising and reaching out to those with whom you want to build a meaningful professional relationship. As part of the same, we were asked to pick and watch an interview from the list of ones made by the WIT cohort 1 participants and write to them about our attempt and key takeaways from the interview.
I picked the interview of Swechha Jha anchored by Archana N.
Swechha Jha is a final year CS student at Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bangalore. She is a very realistic person with a number of achievements under her credit.
Archana N, one of the WIT cohort 1 participants, is a final year CS student at NIT, Calicut.
Archana’s opportunity of choice was Learn IT Girl. Swechha was a Learn IT Girl scholar this year and the conversation they had was around the same program.
My key takeaways from the interview were:
- Surfing helps, but Facebook? Really?
Swechha happened to meet like-minded people from a number of social media sites, especially Facebook. She met a previous Learn IT Girl scholar from whom she came to know about the program. She was also guided by the scholar towards the applying for the program.
2. How to write the best essay for an application?
She was kind enough to walk through each and every essay question in the application. Her key to writing the perfect essay was
To do only a little bit, but doing it every single day
When asked how she took the whole writing process, she mentioned to start early but what struck me the most was that she does a lot of
Reviewing and rewriting until perfection
3. Learn IT Girl program: points to keep in mind
a)Choosing a challenging project which is feasible enough to be finished within 3 months.
b)Building a structured and atomised timeline favouring to complete the project within the given time frame. The more clarity you provide with your plan, the more chances of you getting selected.
c)Showing interest to learn about the different tools and languages required for the planned project and structuring it well. Mentioning how you wish to learn and is looking for an opportunity.
d)Writing about the projects you have done and the courses you have completed. The technology you are familiar with or currently familiarising with.
e)Specifically mention, if you have shown interest in a different domain than the one related to your branch of study and taken up projects in that field.
4.Swechha’s Journey in technology
She started off in the field of IoT. She talks about how a hackathon pushed her to do many more IoT projects and move forward. She mentions how being at a hackathon is the best thing that could happen to a freshman or a sophomore, as they receive guidance from all directions. She received her first internship while participating in one, when she was asked to take a test by one of the leading companies which were sponsoring the event.She later moved into the field of Machine Learning and found it interesting. She has participated in a number of events and volunteered as a Python mentor. She currently pursues an internship in Deep Learning at Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions.
She mentions how attempting to do something in a new field with a tool she is familiar has helped her move forward smoothly. She also tells us how the field and the project are to be given more importance than the languages or tools one is familiar with. Talking about her experience in the program, her work was reviewed periodically by the program mentor and she mentions how they showed great flexibility as far the tools used or the implementation of the project was concerned.
She talks about her experience as a GHCI ’17, WeTech Qualcomm, Western Digital scholar with great enthusiasm and shares how meeting amazing women inspired her to do more.
Swechha concludes by saying how networking with people, be it during meetups, hackathons, conferences or events is really important as a person in the ever-growing field of technology.
