School Days
I studied in Convent of Jesus and Mary school. I was a Science student pursuing PCMB along with Computer Science as my subjects in Class 11 and 12. When I was in class 12 studying in school, I had no idea or thought that I would be into tech after an year. My ambition was to give the NEET Exam and get into a medical college.
NEET is a medical exam held all over India.
About NEET Exam
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET (UG), formerly the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), is an all India pre-medical entrance test for students who wish to pursue undergraduate medical (MBBS), dental (BDS) and AYUSH (BAMS, BUMS, BHMS, etc.) courses in government and private institutions in India and also, for those intending to pursue primary medical qualification abroad.
The exam is conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA), which provides the results to the Directorate General of Health Services under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and State Counselling Authorities for seat allocation.
Source - Wikipedia
Before NEET Exam
I appeared my board exam in 2020 and it's a year when coronavirus spread all over the world. My exam was going on and suddenly the Chief Minister declared lockdown before the day of my last exam, which was Biology. I felt nervous about my marks. At that moment, there's a dilemma that NEET exam will not be held this year. Some of them were protesting against it as there were huge cases of death and affected news of coronavirus. At certain point, we students were sure that there would be no exam held this year. So, the on-fire preparation before the exam went down.
We're told that our board marks of the last exam will be given as an average of our previously held mock tests. So, it made us tension-free at that part. But after a month or two, NTA suddenly announced that NEET exam will be held and also gave us the date of examination and date of issuing the admit card of the same.
Then, I prepared my mind and started revising the topics again. But the time was very less at that moment and the exam was near. I used Vedantu for my preparation and it got me pretty ready for the exam.
Before the day of the exam, I was feeling nervous as I was appearing for the first time but I was confident too.
On the Exam Day
I went to Kolkata and reached the place where I was given the seat to give my exam. It was a Christian school. There were many student like me. We're asked to go to the our respective rooms as given in the panel before 3 hours of our examination. We followed all rules and regulation and finally after 3 hours, an invigilator entered the room and distributed question papers and OMR sheet(a little later) among us.
The paper was a bit tough. After the exam, I was sure that I could get a chance to land into a medical college. So, I happily came back home.
On the Result Day
On the Result day, I was nervous and tensed but as I saw my result, it shook me. I was unable to crack the exam as I couldn't score above 650 rank, which is mandatory for a general candidate.
After the Result Days
My parents told me to get into a general govt. college for a BSc degree and after that I can prepare for NEET sideways to appear next year. I agreed with them. Then I applied to many colleges for Microbiology and as an extra I also applied for Computer Science at one college.
But I wasn't aware that my luck is waiting with Computer Science in hand; rejecting all my Microbiology applications. No college accepted my application to pursue Microbiology. The only college accepted my Computer Science application which I partially didn't wanted to as I feared programming.
My best friend who was just the opposite of mine told me to get into tech as he was fond of Computer Science. He assured me that once I start coming up from all fear and problems and try to write my own program and learn programming languages and build projects, then there'd be no problems to enjoy tech.
My Entry Into Tech
I showed some courage and took up the course. Now, I'm a sophomore student at Kalyani Mahavidyalaya pursuing BSc. Computer Science(Hons.).
Today, I feel like I've made the right decision to get into tech and dropped the thought of a medical student. Today I feel like tech was for me and I love building projects, learning new things and levelling up my skills everyday. Now, I'm in love with tech.
The person who once feared to write a single program to print prime numbers; she is now building projects like Math Quiz Game, Landing Pages and many more...
Perks of getting into Tech
According to my experiences, I have done the following -
- Met many new people in these one and half years.
- Got into Open Source and contributed to many repositories
- Currently participated in GSSoC'22
- Applied for Campus Ambassador Role in Women Techmakers and EddieHub
- Learnt a lot of new skills
- Started my own YouTube channel
- Written many blogs and helped folks to solve their problems in tech
- Created my own GitHub oraganization - OpenSourceHub to help folks to get into Open Source.
As you're now reading this blog, do you know that reading and writing blogs/documentation is also a skill?
Ways to close the gender gap
I believe tech is for all. It's not limited to a particular gender. Also, it doesn't discriminate between men, women or non-binary. People getting into tech, often become developers or projects managers or something else in the niche of tech. But at the end of the day, what we all do is to build something and make the life of normal people easier, faster and more secured.
You can keep these things in mind to close the gender gap.
The women in tech I admire
1. Emma Dawson
Emma Dawson is a junior web developer and a valuable member and the repository maintainer of the EddieHub Community. I follow her work a lot.
2. Khushboo Verma
Khushboo Verma is a Software Engineer at Microsoft, Community Builder and a Public Speaker. I have learnt a lot from her Twitter threads and Twitter Spaces.
3. Shruti Panjwani
Shruti Panjwani is a 17 years old girl. She is a Freelancer and a Full Stack Engineer & Content Creator. She is also the Head of web presence of CloutlandersNFT. I have learnt a lot of things and taken inspiration of making projects from her YouTube Channel.
4. Rishika
Rishika is a Software Developer at LinkedIn and a Former Product intern at Adobe. She helps many people via her community work on Twitter and YouTube channel.
5. Vaishnavi Dwivedi
Vaishnavi Dwivedi is building Michispotlight. She is a community manager at dydxfoundation and also a dev advocate at Scaler. She is a GitHub field expert at fof_mumbai and a full-stack product designer. I have learnt many new things from her community work and took inspiration.
6. Nikita Gupta
Nikita Gupta is a Sr Tech Recruiter at Uber, Founder of FAANGPath, Ex-Amazon, TEDx Speaker, Entrepreneur | Ft. BusinessInsider and The Hollywood Times. She helps people to get into FAANG companies via this organization at LinkedIn named as FAANGPath.
Resources for women and non-binary folks
There are a ton of awesome organizations and spaces for women and non-binary folks to take part in, meet with each other, and create stronger networks and grow together.
Some of them are as follows -
- Women TechMakers
- Girls Who Code
- GirlScript Summer of Code
- Black Girls Code
- Girl Develop It
- Mother Coders
- National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)
- Tech Women
You can check out this blog for detailed resources.
Hope this helps you. Thank you for reading, and let's connect!
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