Google India Challenge Scholarship: A New Journey !!

Okay so before everything, Its’s important to know who you are reading about right ? :D

So lemme introduce myself…

I am Archit Gupta, a final year B.Tech(IT) student from MAIT, Delhi. Yes m a Delhite and a delight to talk to :)

My story involves several ups and downs throughout my academic life, a part of which is related to android which I am going to share in this story.

After standing out to be a scholar in school, my journey in programming began when i was in 12th class. As i was first introduced to C++, I indulged myself deeply into its learning, all thanks to the interest which got created in me and after a while, I was among the fastest learners in programming language in my school. This enthusiasm carried on when I joined college in 2014 and continued to learn to code further by indulging myself into competitive programming. As all beginners face, it was not easy at first, but slowly I got the grasp of it.

All was going well when this new thing — ANDROID — went through my eyes and things became more well :D . I got this sudden instinct to learn this technology and immediately joined a short course. Soon enough I joined internship with an early age startup where although I just assisted in an android project but learnt many new things throughout my duration there.

This was the time when I got a little setback in life. Due to some unfortunate reasons, I had to put a stop on my learning curve owing to some family responsibilities and for almost 1.5 years, I didn’t code a single thing but as we all know, the inner love never dies which was with android in my case.

I knew it would be very difficult to continue where I left things off because I was way out of practice. This is the time(2018) when I came to know about Google and Udacity’s combined effort to upskill India and I thought “Hey, Why don’t I reskill myself :D”. After all, I am going to be an engineer and as the famous qoute says,

“An engineer is never late to learn a technology”, qouted by — the one and only — ME :P

This was the moment I decided to learn android again as a complete beginner by following courses of Udacity and persue Nanodegree afterwards, sounds like a perfect path, right ? :D . Well lemme tell you guys, the more perfect part is the content which Udacity has put into their courses. The way their mentors have created the lessons and explained each thing nicely, I was overwhelmed. I realised I am with the right people and felt more enthusiastic when my application for this scholarship got selected as now I realised I have a chance to prove myself, reskill myself and contribute to the society and build up a network, which is the least I am getting in this programme right now.

But as we all know, progressing in the life is not a cup of cake and involves efforts. This scholarship programme started just when I couldn’t devote my full time learning Android, reason being the phase of placements going on in my college for which I needed to put in time for preparation. Challenge is to take out time to invest learning android and participate in the community to make it a success ALONGSIDE the preparation I am involved in for my placement. At first I was bit taken aback by the thought of not being able to complete my scholarship due to different focus in the current time but then I decided to fight against all odds as I don’t want lose this precious chance at any cost. So I have started devoting extra hours in my daily routine to complete this scholarship programme.

My knowledge in android is currently limited to intermediate level when I am going through the course gradually and learning new things but within a few months I dream to see myself at a position of being able to not only develop but lead a team of developers and I am doing everything I can to achieve that confidence.

It has been one & a half month in this scholarship and I must say I have never experienced such energetic network. Even if you lag somewhere even a little bit, there are friends around you in the community to lift you up. Our lead Mr. Akshit Jain has added stars to this community by conducting interesting activities at times and boosting the enthusiasm of members time to time.

Soon, a more exciting thing happened — Google Udacity’s Delhi-NCR meetup

This meetup was another booster for me as the people I met here were all android lovers. The resonating energy I found in this meetup was enough for me to realise that I am on the right path :)

The interaction in the sessions taken up by the speakers, the Dumb-Charades game we played at the end, the networking — there can be nothing more you can expect in a healthy meetup. I felt like becoming a permanent member of a large community, all thanks to Mr. Rahul Malhotra who took the effort to organise all of this.

At last I would like to add the source of inspiration behind my efforts to make this scholarship a success. My father has always followed a policy to never leave a domain unattended which catches your interest. He, in his academic life put his step into any field which caught his interest and learnt it to the fullest without thinking whether that domain is gonna help in his career or not because when you are learning things just to make a career, chances are less you will succeed and when you are learning things to grow yourself, the career automatically follows you. This is something I learned form him and he became my inspiration to opt this scholarship programme and to complete it at all costs efficiently.

I sincerely thank Google Developers and Udacity, without you I may have still be worrying about the gap in my learning curve and how to fill it instead of taking immediate step.

So this is the story of my life uptil now and I wish to add more stars into it in future :)