Phase I — Women Who Code Delhi Mentorship Program 2021

Being accepted into a program that turns your life around is one of a kind opportunity. And being accepted into Women Who Code Delhi’s Mentorship program, you’re in for a jackpot!

Visual representation of me when I got the acceptance call

Phase I began with a call with my amazing mentor Ms. Mansi Breja. I read her introduction via email which was sent to get to know her better and I knew in a moment she will be someone who can truly provide amazing insights into this beautiful world of development and help me grow even more.

For the first phase, Ms. Mansi asked me to talk about my interests and future plans. Currently, I am really intrigued by the concept of UI and UX designing. I am also a frontend web developer, an open source contributor and a philanthropist. I believe in #TechnologyForTheGreaterGood and I conveyed my mind clearly to my mentor. I believe, the true essence of a mentorship can only be oozed out when the mentee knows what questions to ask.

Ms. Mansi introduced us to a plethora of scholarships and opportunities which I am mentioning below which might be of a help to the one reading this blog right now:

1. Google Venkat Memorial Scholarship
2. Google WTM Scholarship (now known as Generation Google Scholarship)
3. Nutanix Women in Technology
4. Adobe Women in Technology
5. Western Digital Scholarship for STEM
6. Udacity Student Scholarships
7. Goldman Sachs WeTech Mentorship Program
8. GHCI
9. DjangoCon Scholarship
10. PyCon Scholarship
11. CubeCon Scholarship
12. GHC scholarships by companies like Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Yext, AnitaB.org etc.

After introducing us to these scholarships, Ms. Mansi walked us through the procedure of applying to these scholarships in-depth and gave us tips to stand out.

My task for Phase I involved discovering more about these scholarships and finding if anything else resonates with my field of interest, and practice daily coding questions.

Here is an amazing website Ms. Mansi shared with us: https://www.diversifytech.co/ it has endless resources for groups who are underrepresented in the field of technology. While it may seem superficially that many women are now taking up the field of engineering and other fields related to STEM, the retention of women in this field in the long run is still extremely low due to their responsibilities towards their family. I admire every man out there who supports his daughter, his sister, his wife, his friend and every woman he is associated with to push her even more into the exciting field of technology. While going through the website and reading the stories of other women I came to a realisation that I have actually been raised by strong people and I have always been around people who believe in me and trust me that I can do anything.

Taking a moment to appreciate my mum, dad, lil bro, grandparents, uncle, Gaurav, Tusharika and Ravleen for dragging me back on track whenever I seemed to deviate EXACTLY like the GIF below:

I am the white cat

I found out about this amazing program called “Design Development Days” by Dexignare — https://ddd.dexignare.com/ which is completely sponsored by Adobe XD where you get to listen to professionals about their design journey and how can you be a better UI/UX designer. Opportunities like these are indeed a boon for you if you know how to utilise them to the best.

A little tip when you are attending conferences/webinars/sessions which are in accordance with your professional career — always prepare notes, always. Put the notes on your notion and there definitely will be a day when you will need to re-visit them.

In addition to this, I made Tusharika Mehta, my classmate and a very close friend my code buddy and we started doing coding questions together. We categorized LeetCode questions topic-wise and prepared a sheet which we will be taking up after we have completed Love Babbar’s 450 DSA sheet — https://450dsa.com/ and after looking at the amazing resource collection prepared by PepCoding — https://www.pepcoding.com/resources/

I also approached Ms. Mansi for helping me redo my resume and the score after her tips improved many folds. She was kind enough to explain what I need to work on in voice notes (Voice notes people = My favourite).

I am indeed extremely overwhelmed by the guidance I am getting here and may god bless the organisers who understood the need of having a program like this and bringing it to us in such an easy manner.

Can’t wait to learn more in Phase II!