TWTW- Week 1, September 2018
Activities of week 1 of WIT learning program — Rethink Foundation.
The Week That Was..
On the 1st of September 2018, I woke up to an email from Arya Murali, I has received an amazing news that I was selected in the WIT Cohort 1. Rethink foundation’s Women in Tech Learning Program is a 4 week learning program for female engineering students, designed to equip them to leverage the various Women in Tech opportunities.
This is where it all begun. Waking up to such positivity certainly gave me great joy. The negative thoughts in the back of my mind were all destroyed and torn down to pieces. It was a new beginning, a new chance to prove myself, a chance to tell myself that I could.
They say, “The first step is the hardest” — Making a commitment to yourself, for yourself. But from what I experienced last week I’d just say — “Stop thinking, Just do it”.
On the 5th of September 2018, we officially kick-started the program with an extremely happy and exciting news — The top 5 performers of the WIT Learning program would receive a GHCI Student Scholarship this year. I would like to share with you all that, a few months back when I came to know about GHCI, I decided that I would apply for the Scholarship but to my bad luck, this year onwards the scholarship was open only to final year graduate students and me being a third year student could not apply this year. At that time I felt like I had missed a golden opportunity, but after hearing this magnificent news from WIT, I knew that everything happens for good.
The email also came with our very first task in the program. This task also taught me that I have to check my e-mails on a daily basis else I would end up doing tasks last minute and they would not turn up to be as good as I want them to be. Since I saw this e-mail only on the 6th afternoon, I rushed back home after college to get started. But by the time I got home it was already past 8:00pm and I had even missed my first open house. Open House is an opportunity to meet my the other girls in the program who are equally enthusiastic and excited about the opportunities as me.
Task 1 : Our very first activity was to shoot a short 2-minute video and upload it to YouTube. Since I had just 4 more hours to complete it before the deadline, I quickly finished dinner and got to work. First, I made my profile on YouTube, then made a list of what all my video should cover :
- Introduction
- Interests
- Projects, Internships, Volunteering work etc.
- Aspiration
- What about the WIT program I was looking forward to.
I started deciding what and how I would speak under each of the above sections, keeping in mind that the video should not exceed the time limit. After a couple of rehearsals, I decided to record it. There were videos which I messed up completely and a few where I got stuck in between or ended up shaking the camera too much, but finally I ended up with a decent video which covered most of the points that I wanted to share with the girls. I was pretty impressed by myself. Never did I ever believe that I would ever make an introduction video of myself, but the call of the hour proved me wrong. I quickly opened up my YouTube account and uploaded my video and then shared the link to the Rethink bot. I had done it, my first task was complete.
I felt so glad and slept really well that night. People might say that making a introduction video is no biggie, but there is a difference between saying things and actually doing it is a lot different.
Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
On 8th September 2018, I received an email wherein all the girls were praised for doing a great job at the first task. The videos had all been uploaded to the wiki.
Task 2 : We had a short list of 3 tasks this time:
- Join the telegram group
- Create your Personal Website
- Make your first TWTW submission
I got stuck in the first task and could not find the telegram group. As soon as I asked for help, everyone was there to rescue me. Surbhi Gupta and Farha Kareem helped me out. Farha even sent me screen-shot’s just to make sure my problem was solved. Thank you so much guys! I followed their instructions and joined the telegram group. The feeling is just something I can’t express.
Surround yourself with people who you want to be and how you want to feel, energies are contagious!
The next thing I had to do was to make my own website by using google sites. I think the program aims at destroying all my fears and turn all my weaknesses into strengths. I had never done this before, hence the fear. The fear of something unknown. Nevertheless, I pulled up my sleeves and got to work, found some good pictures of mine that I wanted on my website and started off. After deciding the theme and the layout, I started with the content.
The last thing on the Task 2 checklist is this TWTW, The Week That Was. This is a way by which I can share my experiences with everyone else. I created a medium account and started with this article. It takes some time to get all your thoughts together, but it’s definitely worth it.
Learn By Doing. Learn by helping others. Learn to leverage digital tools. Learn to learn on your own.
Also, this is my very first article on medium. Hope you loved to read it! Feel free to give me any feedback. :)
