55 not out #60daysofudacity

Secure And Private AI Challenge

Last year I didn’t apply for this challenge, thinking “I am not ready yet”. This year I applied, thinking “There is no reason to pick me among all the applicants from all over the world”. When I got selected I was really happy and all pumped up to do the course and other course works.

As a golden member of procrastination community, I couldn’t go as smoothly as I had imagined. Adding the active members of the slack community I went back to my favorite “depressed stage”. All the negative thoughts were going through my mind like — “I can’t complete it this time”, “ They will not select me for the next phase” etc.

In these 3 months, I have seen different phases of life. I was Jr. Software Engineer of a company when I started this course. I was struggling to manage enough time to do the course. Then the challenge came “#60daysofudacity” and I am grateful for this initiative. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible for me to complete this course maybe. The challenge worked as a reminder and served its purpose greatly. I tried my best to remain committed to this challenge.

Then came the second phase — I left the job for some reasons. I started focusing on learning things that I love most and interested in. I completed the course in this phase. Participated in kaggle “Getting Started” competitions. Tried to remain active in the community. I also attended a few job interviews and got rejected.

Then comes the third phase — One fine morning just like a movie, I got a phone call from a company where I wanted to work. They called me to join them immediately. It was just like a dream to me. Now, I am focusing much on my new job.

There is a thing that I must say — the evaluation criteria is very hard for an introvert. I find it difficult to interact with any new people. Have I met any people? Yes, some people. I admire their passion. Their level of passion and dedication is beyond description. It helped me to understand and learn how to do things in a certain way when you want it so badly.

This is not a very good write up. But I tried to share my journey/experience of my life during this short period. At this last stage, I remember someone saying in ama_session “It’s all about the journey of learning rather than who gets into the second phase”. Of course, I have learned new things which wouldn’t be possible without this challenge.

I wish every person of this challenge very good luck for their upcoming journey.

Happy Learning :)

And, yes I’m 55 not out. 5 more runs needed in 5 days.