Introduction
Hello, readers hope you are all doing well my good name is Malavi pursuing my final year of B.Tech. I am super excited to share the 3 months (25%) of experience I had. I will be more than happy if my mistakes and realizations will help at least one person.
Things I decided to do in 2023
GSoC Proposal
Leetcode streak
Web Development
Campus Placement
Multitasking
GSOC
After Hacktoberfest I enjoyed contributing to open source and collaborating with amazing people in simple terms I enjoyed being a member of making a change in real-world projects adding value in any form gave me super satisfaction. As a result, I searched for a few more open-source events in the process I came across Google Summer of Code is coming soon.
I decided to search for a good organization from January on words. After picking up a few organizations with the tech stack I am familiar with, meanwhile joined their communities but my bad I didn't get any sort of response from them.
But everything happens for a reason.
One day I came across a YT video in which a previous Gsocer take a vlog of his entire journey of experience. I watched the entire video and fell in love with his attitude of ups and downs. Suddenly I got thought why not make try on the organization he choose I went on searching, and join their Slack channel and started contributing.
Well, I get into the org. but the worst part is I didn't even familiar with their tech stack in the meanwhile I am not that much pro in any tech also. But I decided to stick to that organization by learning at least the syntax of Ruby On Rails in this way I started learning RUBY and wrote blogs meanwhile what I learn.
For the time being, I also started asking for issue assignments. Fortunately, I got assigned a few issues with the help of the maintainers I made a reasonable amount of contributions. The most important thing in open source is we have to know how to set up the project locally even though they mention all the things in the setup.md file but still everyone faces a lot of issues.
In my case probably it took me 3 weeks to set up the project locally after a lot of maintainer suggestions, self-research, and frustration, at one point I even say to myself.
I am not even able to set up the project locally then how can I even contribute?
But I keep trying and finally managed to set up the application.🫠I started to be active in their Slack as well as GitHub.
Leetcode Streak
After completing my #100daysofcodingchallenge I stop doing coding this is also concerning me a lot that's why I decided if I maintain a Leetcode streak then probably I will be consistent as I didn't have that much of a good grip on the graphs, hashtable and LinkedList it's hard for me to complete the easy problem in that particular topic.
At one point I realized what am doing it's like learning how to solve problems but not understanding the logic behind them. With this thought, I quit.
Web Development
The very next day I started my #16daysofprojectchallenge
This is another field I am interested in meanwhile I decided to build some small projects to get hands-on experience.
While scrolling I came up with a YT thumb line banner with 16 projects with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I decided to give it a try. I announced to all my socials that I am going to start this. After 5 days mean when I was on my 5th project the organization announced its project list.
After a lot of brainstorming and strategies, I pick one project to write a proposal. But the worse part is I didn't have any idea how to implement them in a real-time project. At starting I decide to manage both my project and proposal work but didn't work out as the tech stack and the tool they gonna workout with within the project is so hard to understand.
I decide to quit again.🫣from the project challenge I started.
I completely focus on writing a proposal. From that day I allocated completely my time to writing the proposal as I was in college getting so much of distracted with the classes and examinations. So, I went home and used my daily hours productively to understand the project.
College Placements
This is the most important part for any undergraduate final-year student. It seems to be easy to manage all the stuff that we face. I thought the same in addition to my side hustles I decided to attend college placements after attending a few most of them being call center and business-related 3rd part vendors jobs. After a kneen observation, I realized am wasting my time by spending 8 hours a day on this useless stuff. I completely boycott the placement notification.
Well, I thought I made a great decision but all of my friends started getting placed in those companies. Even though I am strong enough to receive them but there is something that always runs in the back of my head am I behaving overconfident by ignoring this much?
By all these self-doubts I kept working on things I wanted. I successfully submitted the proposal at the end of this month.
Multitasking
People have different opinions on this and it works out for a few people and it won't even be possible for someone to manage even 2 tracks of learning.
Again it is a subject I often think like another person also has the same 24 hours but they are managing daily to stay focused on more than 2 tasks. I started surrounded by a lot of things I wish to DO. As time passed I observed that I am just doing for the sake of doing but at the end of the day, I was not getting enough satisfaction.
So, I asked a few people about how they are managing their time to cope with all the things that I observed
Initially, they also not started multitasking as time pass they started adjusting their hours productively. Again we have to practice that.
A few people have flexible college hours(4-5 hours of classes).
Their college is super good enough to teach.
The environment they are working. Most people neglect it has a huge impact on work.
A few of them are college dropouts.
In the flow, we don't even think of all the tiny factors that help them to multitask. But we only see the result they are producing and start comparing ourselves with them and start blaming the capability we have.
It's OK!
If you observe the things I did in the last 3 months I didn't complete a single thing properly. So, my conclusion is
It's OK if you have self-doubt.
It's OK if having insecurities.
It's OK if you don't understand.
It's OK surrounded by a lot of things.
It's OK to feel confused.
It's OK if you didn't finish the work you started.
It's ALL OK!!!!
But one thing I am sure of is I always tried to learn something new. Yes didn't feel any sort of regrating the things I did.
In my opinion, CONSISTENCY is not sticking to work and forcing yourself to do it just because you posted something on social. DO always prioritize your tasks.
In my case, if I didn't quite both the Leetcode streak and the #16daysprojectchalenge I feel regrate with the Gsoc proposal.
The lesson I learned
In the FAMO tech world, it's very easy to blame ourselves for not getting things done on our way. But it's OK if you complete one work rather than rushing in the tasks and leaving all of them incomplete and went bed with the regrate.
At starting I have some sort of insecurity to introduce myself to anyone in the social because all of them are a step ahead of me in terms that to they are very younger than me.
But the people I met are so welcoming they made me super comfortable by saying "Age is the number you had a great spirit to grow in your career". After I realized I am super fortunate at least in the final I came to know all the things.
Conclusion
So, these are things that I tried out over the last 3 months yeah it seems super messy with a lot of self-doubts and confusion but I am super fortunate that I realized and analyzed the mistakes I did.
I will be very happy if my experience helps at least one person. With this, I am also super excited about the days I have.
That's it, readers feel free to share your thoughts. Let's Connect and learn from each other.