Prayogshaala, created by Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan had organized a One week online bootcamp to teach tech and applied skill sets to the selected applicants, young women in technology. Before getting into the bootcamp days, let me brush through the pre-bootcamp thoughts I had.
First of all, I was so happy for being selected, but I was not sure how this bootcamp would go for me; my head was mixed up with random thoughts like, will I be able to make my voice heard or will I stay as silent as I have always been at any collective programs; will I be able to perform as good as others or will I make it worse . But today, after the bootcamp, while I am typing down all of these thoughts, I can sort them out with no doubt and probably say that: 'my voice too, is meant to be heard and I am always unique for what I am, (no two unique-s are comparable).'
Our bootcamp schedule was set at night 7 to 8:30 for one week: from October 19 to 24, to be precise. And I have been keeping a journal, been writing about each night's experience before I went to sleep. Now I have added the all of those pieces together and am sharing it as this writing:)
So the first night of the online bootcamp went well. The meeting started off with 15 of us including Lakshya, the platform was google meet. By 7:10 almost all of them were present and the session began by a brief introduction given by each of us. Lakshya was calling each one of us by name so that everyone got the chance to talk about themselves. I was surprised to see that all these girls came from different regions and more amused to see how smart they all were! And guess what! I messed up! With all the confidence I gathered, I spoke up after my name was called but came out as if there was some problem with my earphone or laptop settings that they couldn't hear me. So I joined through the phone then and spoke. Oh Yeah, I forgot the major part before this intro, Lakshya showed us the statistics (I must say), it displayed the number of total registrations, short listed people, cities, first year shortlisted, second year shortlisted, third year shortlisted, fourth year shortlisted and then the final list. So the final list comprised of the fourteen of us; she also presented a slide with photos of each one of us. Honestly, I was so much delighted to see myself selected among the 14 members from the 90 shortlisted ones. After this introduction, Lakshya talked about the night's schedule and she started screen sharing and presenting. It wasn't a monologue, to be frank and that was a great feeling, it would be better mentioning the whole session as a discussion: about confidence and courage and fears and so many things. We were given a short task with three minutes time limit as well, draw our self portrait in a piece of paper; hence to show how awkward we feel doing things for first time. After the session by Lakshya ,there was a self defense session supervised by Varsha; I admit, it was really good and she was so cheerful and energetic. With just one day itself, I saw how one can support the other with consideration and words. This was a very splendid experience but my daily data got exhausted; my bad.
Second night; oh my my... tonight was so gooodd! The schedule consisted of the three sessions namely mindful branding, resume writing and portfolio website. In the mindful branding session we talked about the influence of brands on our professional life. Lakshya also emphasized points for the best way of writing and preparing a resume. The action words would probably be very helpful, I hope! And guess what! Again my microphone is cheating me, it doesn't work, so whenever I had doubts, I had to type all of those in the chat box and also network issues popped up more than the usual making my self go mad. Anyway, I was surprised that I did ask so many doubts; I couldn't believe that, you know?
I am like a "no doubt even there is doubt" person and then this day, I was asking so many of them!
And everything went so good. So finally we all were working on our portfolio website and I am so thrilled. I haven't completed it yet, but I do want to complete this and host it with GitHub. The whats-app group is also becoming very helpful for me; now I could clearly understand what being there for help means. Thank You so muchh people!
This third night was not so good for me, since I did not "cease the moment" actually. I had tried but something is always pulling me down, I wanted to destroy it completely but it is getting stronger even at this platform where I could share any nonsense and not care because no one knows me here. Today's topic included public speaking, perfecting your pitch, share your story and email writing. I took so many screenshots today because this was the one field I wanted to improve.I could create a very good bio by using the details from today's session. And oh yes! I solved the microphone issue, the problem was that the microphone volume was set to the least, my mistake.(I solved it before the meeting itself;)).
The fourth night, today's session included design thinking, competitive coding and appscript. Lakshya presented slides on design thinking and how to improve this quality. Then she presented us some competitive coding sites which were the few best platforms for learning coding and to be better by solving a multitude of problems. Next came the Appscript session, this was all about the coding connected with spreadsheet; we learnt how to sent mails by accessing the data from the spreadsheet and we actually did it. That was so quick and unbelievable. Then we also connected google calendar and sheets; I accidentally made a mistake in mine and had an error pop up. So I presented my screen and the problem was found: I didn't paste my calendar id in the second id section. And hurray! Yes, I too connected google calendar and sheets. This can be sooo good for people with hectic schedules I guess.
Today, the fifth night was totally amazing and wonderful! #IamRemarkable workshop was the highlight of today's session and basically by the end of the session we found how remarkable we all were and ARE! We shared our tiny stories, experiences and all of this felt like this was the most comfortable space each of us had, at those moments. I am going completely out of words, about the session, because it has had a great, really great impact on me which I'll never know how to explain. When we were told to write about us, sentences beginning with 'I am Remarkable because', I started off and this was a little difficult for me in the beginning because little did I know to talk about myself. But after getting a strong hold in writing those sentences, I couldn't believe that I was this wonderful and remarkable. I could also see one lifting the other, providing support and needed help; all of this implies how happy I am, to be part of this wonderful community! A lot of love and power to you girls, and by seeing each other catch up on social media too, felt sooo good. But I really do have this gut feeling that this whole bootcamp would have been extra-ordinary if it had been organized in the real world out there. Now just one night session remains and I am looking forward to that.
Last night; and we are packing up. We are all going to miss this group for sure. We had a guest speaker for today's session, Sree Divya Vadlapudi. She talked about innovation and all the aspects surrounding it. We were given moments to speak about our experiences also and to my astonishment I did speak up; there are changes in me that I could notice for myself. I remember one English class hour in my plus two days, I can clearly picture our English sir walking in the class, sharing his philosophical views and one such view was 'life is full of compromises and adjustments'. I didn't know why, but that sentence had hit me hard that I noted it down in the back page of my English text book. And today while Divya was talking, I noted down another one, which has indeed reminded me of the former context actually :
'NEVER COMPROMISE IN YOUR PASSION OR CAREER WHATEVER BE THE CHALLENGES'.
There were a lot of other takeaways from today's session as well. After Divya's session, Lakshya talked about the foundation of leadership, mindfulness and then later we had an informal chit chat and that felt good. And finally Yeah!!! We are graduated. This bootcamp has inspired me a lot more than I expected it to. This was a wonderful experience and I would have been terribly sorry for my self if I had missed out the application. I am so proud to say that this bootcamp experience is one of the best experiences I had and I am so so grateful to the whole team including Lakshya for this wonderful week. And thank you for the beautiful certificate as well;)
Well, I have finally hosted my portfolio website!
The pathetic state is, not that we are brought up in a patriarchal society but, that when we do not take the chances, not try to grow out and not help others grow. So let the change begin from each one of us.