TWTW- week 1, October 2018
The Week That Was- #WITx learning programme.
I was tired of staying at hostel and wanted to go back home very badly and then 25th October, Friday turned out to be a holiday for college. I was super happy and caught the next train home on Thursday evening. It was too good to be back home!
It was the next day that I received an Email from Rethink which said that I was selected to the WITx learning programme. I was really excited and super happy. I instantly confirmed my participation through the Google form.
“Good things comes in small packages”
Rethink’s WITx Learning Program is a 2 week learning program for female engineering students, designed to equip them to leverage the various Women in Tech opportunities. The first task of the week was completing second round of the application where I was required to submit an introduction video on YouTube and publish my website. My stupid habit of procrastination made me wait till it was the evening of the night that marked the deadline. It was a hustle after that.
This taught me that procrastination will lead me to end up doing tasks at the last minute and that, things will not turn up as good as I want it to be. It also taught me that, even if I had more time than what it takes to just complete a task for the name sake, I had to utilise every minute of it, if I had to present the best version of it. These tasks also taught me that:
“Sometimes what is considered to be a herculean task turns out to be the simplest one when we actually start doing it!”
As per the directions in the email that confirmed my participation in the programme, I joined the Telegram group of WITx. I scrolled through the participants and found a few familiar faces. I was eagerly waiting for the activity to begin at 7:00 pm that evening.
At 7:00 pm sharp, Arya Murali came live on YouTube. She gave a quick induction to the programme and walked us through the action plan. There are certain things that I learned from her that evening :
- Stick on to time as everyone’s time is valuable.
- Email is the way of the world for official communication.
- Deadlines are specified for a reason and no excuse can explain not meeting it.
- Peers are the best support that you have while you learn or do something new.
- Checking Emails on a daily basis is mandatory for a systematic work life.
The next half an hour went about with the first activity of WITx learning programme. Farha and Rasmi, WIT cohort 1 scholars briefed the task:
TASK 1: #discover
Rasmi had put it nicely this way:
- Discover 3 opportunities
- Tweet the 3 away together
- When you tweet, copy paste the link to the opportunity and put in one line on why it interested you
- Remember to add @rethinkcollect and #opportunity
15 minutes and then we saw 200+ opportunities just a click away. I would like to quote Megha KC, my peer:
“An enthusiastic heart finds opportunities everywhere!”
It was indeed a great insight and introspection. I realised that I do not have to wait for anyone to come and tell me about opportunities. All I need is Google and some time! And there lies the ocean of opportunities to embrace. Atibhi Agrawal put forthe the idea of making an excel sheet by including all these opportunities that we discovered so that we can also have a quick review of it whenever necessary. A great suggestion indeed! We also learned that:
“Sharing is the way to conquer the ultimate with the hands of friendship extended for help!”
TASK 2: #connect
The next mail opened up the next task. Summarising an interview of any one cohort 1 participant in a blog. Writing a blog was also new to me. I made an account in Medium instantly and started writing.
Next part of the task was to connect with that participant through an email. I look forward to connect with Bhairavi Shah. I have been through her works. She has done an amazing work during cohort 1 tasks. I also learned how to write a proper email through the article by Rethink https://blog.rethinkfoundation.in/on-writing-better-emails-9779a5a07597
I’ve also learned that one of the key principles of connecting with people is to make them feel good and make it personal.
And the last step was writing this TWTW, The Week That Was. Now I find the joy in writing. I want people to read it and not get bored. So I’m trying hard to make it attractive. I believe this is a part of self improvement too, though it takes some time to put together all my thoughts.
“No learning is complete without some self-learning!”
This is my first blog. Hope I did not bore you! Feel free to make suggestions and give me feedbacks!
Connect with me at parvathygajay@gmail.com
