Holiday Club: The guide to my passion-discovery 😊

Here’s our Rookie’s story in building impressive projects within 5 days of our tech bootcamp!

As someone who is interested in tech engineering, I realize that embarking on a STEM journey requires a considerable initial investment.

To become an Android developer, one needs a laptop with specific specifications that can support Android Studio for smooth running. Typically, laptops that have these requirements cost around 10 million Indonesian rupiah, and many people don’t have the privilege to afford such resources. Hence, those who are privileged to have a capable laptop should be extremely grateful as it opens up various opportunities.

My first Holiday Club WOOHOO!

I’m grateful that there are many scholarships, trials, or free resources like Generation Girl’s classes and even tutorials on YouTube and documentation available on the internet. As for whether Indonesians can afford STEM education, in my opinion, it’s very possible, as long as there’s a stable internet connection and a capable laptop, one can learn STEM smoothly.

I really appreciate GenG (nickname of Generation Girl!) for organizing the Holiday Club which is the five days bootcamp of learning tech skills. GenG provides a safe space for women to learn as much as possible in the STEM field. I truly love the environment, the positivity, the mentors, friends, and so on.

It’s amazing how we’ve been able to create something so impressive (Final Project) in such a short time!

I know many of my friends who are just diving into the STEM field, and so many of them have already created such awesome works! I really love their ideas that I hadn’t even thought of. Such experience motivates me to study more seriously! 🤗

Pros and cons of Holiday Club

Hi, let me introduce myself. My name is Priyanka Uzlah Priambodo, but you can call me Uzlah. Currently, I am a new student of the 27th batch at Binus Online Learning, majoring in Information System.

The first time I joined the Generation Girl program was in the middle of 2021 during the Summer Club 2021 event.

At that time, I saw the poster posted in another organization’s IG story @GoresDenai, where it stated that GenG would organize a summer club with class materials that matched my vocational school (SMK) major, which is Software Engineering (RPL).

To expand my knowledge because I had never learned the Python language and to fill my holiday break from boarding school, I joined Computer Science 101 because that was the only remaining class available at that time. From the 5 days of learning, I got a very good impression of this holiday club and the organization, so I became very interested in this organization.

I’ve learned a lot from here, mostly because I come from an IT vocational school, so some of the things I’ve learned were already covered in my previous school. However, having a final project here has been very helpful for recalling the material. As for the new topics I learned, there are computer science with Python, then Data Science, and product management from the classes I’ve taken.

I love Holiday Club soooooo much!!!!

Honestly, I’ve tried almost all the classes from the holiday club because I’m still in the process of finding my true calling and exploring different roles.

With GenG organizing classes like these, I can explore various roles and after participating in several classes and consulting with mentors about the pros and cons of working in those roles, I finally found my career direction thanks to GenG’s classes.

The pre-material videos on Thinkific are really cool! Good job GenG team! The animations are great but IMO it would be nice if, in Thinkific, besides videos, PDF modules/presentations could be added too. Because during the class, sometimes I like to have the presentation PDF opened, but now it’s all in video format, so it’s a bit difficult to follow along during the class.

In addition to the well prepared material, I’m also thrilled to meet new friends and get to know them. In fact, I can easily make connections with the mentors! I usually use office hours to ask questions about the field mentors are in, and it’s really helpful because I’m still figuring out what the scope of work is for each role, the pros and cons, and so on.

Here comes the challenging part that is communication. Sometimes I feel a bit shy when asking questions, and honestly, the club feels a bit short, just one week. It feels like there’s not enough time to learn and ask all the questions, so there are still some lingering questions in my mind, but the class is about to end.

I hope the duration to learn can be improved because one week feels very fast, like being chased to finish the final project! lol. But overall, I really like everything!

Review of My Final Project since 2021!

Since I’ve taken many classes, I kind of forgot about the projects I’ve worked on. As far as I remember, during Computer Science, I created a receipt for a store. Then, in the first Project Management (PM), I developed a money manager. For the second PM, I made an app for recording courses for students who were absent and for organizing mentorship related to the respective courses. In Data Science, I predicted the weight of fish, and on the website, I built a personal website to showcase my portfolio.

Of all these first projects in GenG’s Holiday Club, perhaps the most memorable was the PM project creating a money manager. At that time, I was particularly concerned about managing my own finances, so I decided to make it my final project. I really enjoyed working on it, and even when I got stuck in the middle, I booked office hours and consulted with mentors. Thankfully, the results were very satisfying.

However, the most memorable experience was when I worked on the PM project that assisted students. I collaborated with a group of 5 people (previously, I used to work alone). The enjoyable part was that we brainstormed together in tight schedules, making it super fun! And of course the plus side was making new friends!

Thanks for reading the honest story from our favorite Rookie, Uzlah! 💕 See you SOON on our new Spring Club Explorer and new stories of our new aspiring community writers will follow! Don’t forget to check out more insightful articles from Generation Girl by clicking the box below 👇

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