WWCD Mentorship Program 3.0: Week 5
Finally, on to the final week! This week was focused exclusively on Creating an online presence and we basically wrapped up the whole program in this call. We talked about the holistic meaning of women in STEM fields, the different challenges they face, and the key takeaways from this mentorship program.
Needless to say, the entire duration of the five weeks of this mentorship program has proven to be a refreshing and yet at the same time a much-needed experience and I am extremely grateful to be able to participate in this as a mentee and learn so much from my fellow women in tech!
With the unwavering guidance and support from my mentor Pallavi Bishnoi, at the end of the 5 weeks, I can confidently target the areas I need to improve my skills in, be it data structures and algorithms or as simple as how to properly present myself in an interview environment. The various opportunities, that I missed out on in my freshman year now feel much more within reach, and having a clear strategy on how to look for such opportunities and tackle them headstrong has been one of the best highlights of this whole mentorship program.
At the same time, this mentorship program has not only provided me with a platform to express myself and be confident in who I am but has also provided me with the best female community I could possibly ever ask for! The sheer pleasure of having a community with like-minded people, looking out for you, and understanding your struggles is something I would like to thank Women Who Code the most for! Moreover, the blogs of other mentees have helped me all throughout so much and inspired me to share my journey and grow together as a community.
I have covered my entire experience of this Mentorship Program on a weekly basis and you can surely check them out here and I hope they help you out as much as I loved writing them for the community:
Now, coming onto the learnings and discussions of our last session for this mentorship program!
- Creating a strong online presence: We discussed the various ways to create a mark on different social media platforms and how potentially it goes a long way in the future. Some of the ways included writing blogs on Medium about the various programs we become a part of and helping the community through them, having a strong and detailed LinkedIn profile preferably with a lot of documentation and proofs of previous works, and finally having a personal portfolio in case we decide to reach out to someone in an organization.
- Feedback: Like all mentors, our mentor also asked us for the holistic feedback of the whole program and how much it was helpful in catering to our personal topics and needs. To say getting Pallavi ma’am as my mentor might definitely be an understatement but the amount of learning and guidance I have received from her all throughout this experience has been something I will always try to reflect on with my efforts and work.
- Next Steps: By the end, we were discussing the approaching opportunities like Google Generation Scholarship and how to prepare for the essays beforehand, the projects to work on and she motivated us to practice problems from the different DSA topics and never refrain from asking doubts and reaching out to her!
In the end, we decided to always remain in touch and reach out to our mentor for any kind of guidance we need, and mutually bonded over our love for Sherlock on Netflix and Anime!
THIS WAS BEYOND WORDS.
All of us mentees in our small batch learned so much from Pallavi ma’am. She went out of her way and shared all the wisdom she had collected over the years and even shared her little secret tips! I would highly recommend first and second-year undergraduates like me to surely participate in the next edition of this Mentorship Program, because as it is rightly said “It's not about grabbing all the opportunities that come your way, but grabbing the right ones that do.”
I am grateful to Women Who Code Delhi and Pallavi ma’am for their time and efforts to pull out such a helpful program for us fellow women! Thank you, WWCD with all my heart 💕
