The Google Scholarship Journey
Introduction
So first things first…..who am I?
I am Rajat Kumar Gupta. I have been interested in computer technologies since childhood. I started programming since class 9. I was introduced to Java. From that day onwards I fell in love with programming.
Currently i am studying Computer Science Engineering and in my 3rd Year. I am willing to push harder and harder to achieve my goals and gain recognition.
The day i started learning Java something happened. That something led me to know where my true passion lies. Those questions that i had when i was a little boy like -
- How does this character jump when i press the spacebar?
- How do the folders open?
- How does the mobile understand what to do when i press the call button?
All such questions started getting answered as i walked through the beautiful jungle of variables,loops, methods, classes , objects,etc. That is when it all started making sense. From then on I didn’t want to come out of this massive jungle. I wanted to explore. Wanted to go deeper and deeper.
The Udacity Gateway
Yes the gates were opened for anyone and everyone to enter. There were multiple roads. I had to choose one.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
— The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I assure you in my case there were more than 2 roads (Hehe!). Need proof? Here take a look.
Several others(developers) were also there. Some were from my part of the jungle, others were from a different part of the jungle. All trying to choose one road from the many present.
So I chose the one called Android. One of the developers had already taken the same road and he told us that we had to apply all of the things that we have learnt in the jungle.Was I up for the challenge? Hell yeah!
The Android Journey
The journey had 2 stages to go through —
- Basics ( i covered a brief part of this stage in this article)
- Intermediate
When i had explored the Basics stage(thanks to all the developers who constantly helped me), i wanted to move on to the Intermediate stage. To get to this stage i have to cover a 3 month long journey called Google India Challenge Scholarship.
Google India Challenge Scholarship
Being in this journey for more than one and half months , I am being prepared with multiple tools and concepts that i need to learn to get to the Intermediate stage. However this time I have the support of many more developers who all are from different parts of India.
To constantly help and guide each other we use the following things —
Activities to be involved in
The moderators and the Udacity officials make sure that no one gets bored by creating activities and announcements like these —
Apart from these there are ama sessions where Akshit Jain sir answers all questions and live help sessions where Iip Permana sir answers all technical questions related to the course. They are very helpful and they also help if we direct message them some of our questions.
All over this particular community that i am currently a part of is something that i have wanted for pretty long. Now since i am a member of it i am using every possible way to be an active member by learning new things from experts, help others if they have faced a similar problem as mine, bonding with the community, showcasing some of my solutions to challenges posted by moderators(Github repo here) and most importantly helping myself by asking questions if i hit a roadblock anytime during the course.
Thankyou Google and Udacity to provide such a platform where all like minded people can talk and chill out. There is a special significance of the colorful badge in my opinion. It signifies diversity which can be seen particularly inside the slack channel. Someone from North posts a question and someone from South answers it. Same goes for the East and West. Life could never be so enjoyable! Cheers to the scholarship community!!
I even got the opportunity to attend Google I/O 2019. Read more about it here👇
