One year into College, where's my podium?
How much we sometimes underappreciate ourselves and how to get our podium
🤷🏻What's the Podium?
We all see ourselves standing on the Podium- where we stand at the very first position with a trophy in both hands and a medal around our neck. Ever since I've been to College, which is a private one, I've been amongst the crowd. Life is a race; if you have to stand out, you must stand on the podium. Here, my race is about self-growth. I believe whatever a person is doing in their life or what they have to do, they've got to learn to love themselves first. Because we deserve it.
🤝Meet the confused individual
Lost in the huge waves of the confused crowd, I lost my vision to the Podium - there were expectations not from others but from myself. You see, before entering the JEE Joyride, I had picked up my laptop for the first time not to play GTA, but to learn about coding. It was the time of the first lockdown of 2020, I had just finished my 10th class board exams and was a graduate of several Netflix series, I even once picked up an American accent until I realized the British one's bettah. Come forth one movie that made me understand the importance of coding and why we were ever introduced to HTML in our school. The movie was The Social Network- a biopic on the creator of Facebook (now Meta)- Mark Zuckerberg. It inspired me to try to work my hands on the keyboard to code apps and websites instead of cheat codes on GTA. The 16-year-old starts learning HTML and discovers freeCodeCamp.
🛣️The Journey
freeCodeCamp has played a huge part in my coding journey. Its interactive HTML & CSS lessons have made it super easy to learn for someone like me who gets bored of content regularly.
So, the journey starts with HTML- I learned about different tags and how HTML provides website structure. It is super easy to learn for beginners and provides a kickstart to the tech world.
For me, HTML isn't just some markup language that has structured the web but a language that has structured me to always try out new things and get that dopamine hit to build new things!
Who builds things is an engineer, basically. Like most students in India, I have opted to go for mainstream subjects, one of them being Engineering but we will come back to that part later.
Okay, so for now I have learned HTML and CSS- the duo to make up a landing page or, build beautiful animations and features.
Note: freeCodeCamp not just deals with Web Development but also AI & ML! Don't forget to check their YouTube channel as there is absolutely something that you'd have your hands on.
🤔Is coding effective in schools?
I have completed my high school education at a CBSE-affiliated private school. It is a green and beautiful campus located at the shoulders of my beautiful hometown- Jabalpur.
"Is coding effective in schools?" was my 11th-grade dilemma as according to my coding experience at school, we were taught in a...boring way. I still remember we used to memorize Python codes and HTML tags line-by-line before there was a test or a practical exam in the lab.
But it was all different for the 16-year-old because he built a somewhat appealing website on his own within 2 days. Ironically, it was ranting against the education system.
I am not saying every school is ineffective in their teaching methods, it also depends on the interest of students. You can take me as an example of one of the least interested students. Sometimes it takes one teacher whose passion and interest engulf its students into learning, on their own!
🦸🏻My first Mentor
A mentor is crucial when it comes to going down a path you've no idea of. It's like the untraveled road but...with someone who has traveled it!
For me, it was Instagram. Hear me out, It was the platform where I found my mentor.
One day as I was scrolling through my feed and swiping on stories, I received a follow request from a page that dealt with educating the masses on various technical domains. It mostly wandered through programming languages and their concepts. The page was still growing and had less than 200 followers.
I accepted their follow request and got a DM the next day. It read, "Hey Manveer, Do you want to learn HTML and CSS?", it is surprising how the universe works. So I obviously said yes and then they immediately asked for my phone number. I found it a bit weird but I still gave them my number.
Half an hour later, I got a call, and on talking to him I found out he was a college-going guy. He asked me how much I knew HTML & CSS and then offered me his course on the very same with JavaScript added. He also offered to clear any doubts regarding them and that I could call him anytime. This was so worth it for an amount of just Rs. 300. We developed such a great bond that I could even call him today and ask for queries.
🏅My First Hackathon
I was still a budding seed in Web design when our school announced a Hackathon. It was called Wizemindz and was organized by IIM Lucknow. We were asked to participate individually, or in a team. There were three categories- Web Development, Programming, and Robotics. I had my optional subject as Physical Education while my friends had chose Computer Science, we went to the same tuition and I asked them if they were participating in it. They replied yes and asked me to join them but the only catch was that they were building in Python and I had zero programming logic. So I parted ways as I wanted to participate in the Web Development domain. I was unsure about participating as I had less confidence in myself but I went with it anyways.
The theme for this Hackathon/Competition was Fitness & Sports. So I built a website, I still remember 4 web pages - pure HTML & CSS.
I've shared them the way they were built, raw. For the 19-year-old me this website looks like it could be made responsive, with less-repetitive code (shoutout to React) and so on. But this website is the reason why I can believe in myself to continue to learn more and more technologies as I know I can excel, if I try hard enough.
I dealt with this website, its repetitive CSS and HTML for 4 hours every day while managing my school and it was worth it as this won me the second position! I was and still am so proud of myself as I single-handedly managed to make this website while others were a team of 3 or more people!
My school congratulated me and my photo was put up on their social media. This dopamine hit was everything that you needed to move ahead but let me tell you what happened after this.
📝Goodbye Development, Hello JEE
The 11th grade ends and covid for a time, ends too. I, along with a couple of friends had bought a subscription to one of the major EdTech platforms- Physics Wallah. Their course assured me that get enough marks in JEE to get a seat in NITs, IIITs, or even IITs. I know most people start their preparation from 11th grade, but let me be honest I hated this system. I hated the way learning became a competition for one to get the opportunity to learn from the best. But I realized that since the best minds in the country teach in these institutes, why not go for them? I had a whole year to prepare and at that time, the board exams were in two parts- term 1 and term 2. So I took part in this and gave my all but in the end, I did not get the desired result. But it meant not so much to me because I knew I could do better- I could do better with coding! So I resumed my journey to learn Web Development and this time I started learning JavaScript.
🧑🏻💻Goodbye JEE, Hello Development
As I am learning JavaScript, I am already enrolled in the University. I still had time to report at the campus, around 1-2 months. During this period, I did everything I couldn't when JEE was around i.e. hanging out with friends more often, playing my beloved cricket, web development, and much more. I completed my JavaScript before joining the University and when my first year started, I found some awesome friends who are with me today in my second year. We code, we chat, we have fun.
So in my first year, I am brushing up on the DOM (Document Object Model) concepts in JavaScript through YouTube videos and learning to build interactive websites. I had also purchased a course from a YouTuber whose intellect in coding was good. In the course, he educated the masses about how cold-emailing works, how to use LinkedIn effectively, how to practice DSA, and much more. He also organized a Hackathon in which we were asked to build a team of 6. This was one of my first leadership position moments as I'd contacted several people enrolled and built a team with them. There were people who were doing jobs while some were in college. The theme of the Hackathon was simple- to build a platform/game/program that impacts the world in some way or the other. I had a bunch of ideas with me and when the team formation was complete, I explained it to them. They agreed to work on this and I divided the members on the basis of the skills they had. For example, some individuals knew API-fetching while some were proficient in JavaScript. I handled the look of the website and what contents should go in it while a guy with me, handled JavaScript. The only role of JavaScript in our website was to display a carousel of images. We were asked to build the project prototype. This meant that it did not matter if the website was working or not.
This is one part of the website where we planned to integrate our API. Our website was about fuel- which you can book such that you do not need to wait in long lines to get the tank filled.
Sadly, we did not get shortlisted but hey, I got to work with such talented individuals and made so many connections! I sensed so much responsibility since I managed the ppt, people, and the whole project. This is one of the lessons I've learned as being a leader, you should not always manage everything, you should manage people and have them manage everything ofcourse not in a bossy way.
⚔️DSA v/s Development
Data Structures and Algorithms is a crucial part in any Computer Science student's life. It makes you a great problem solver and brings up the sense of confidence to solve any problem you come across in your program or in your life.
Development is what takes DSA inside it. If you're building a social media app, you need both Development and DSA to make your app the best in the market!
Well, that's what I was stuck into during my first year. We were introduced to programming in C during our 2nd semester and I had zero experience on programming. Seeing my peers solve simple problems like palindorme, fibonacci, etc. made me feel behind. So, I was drifting into development and learning to program at the same time and it was hectic! Then I found a YouTube video by Parikh Jain in which he discussed about the very same problem I was facing. He advised to give time to each of the technology at once and then jump into another.
So I went to complete my Frontend Development journey and while I agree it was good to learn Frontend during that time but it was still making me feel behind as my peers had started with DSA.
The Current Me
It's my 3rd semester and I have just finished up with learning React, only need to complete a handful of projects to have my proper command over it. I do not feel behind in life because I am learning technologies effectively and also have started learning Java and solving LeetCode. I'd say it has now become manageable to balance both Development and DSA but I would not suggest this to a beginner.
Thanks to my Frontend experience and the various skills of my peers, we are now taking part in the Smart India Hackathon 🚀
Found the Podium!
The podium is here. This whole page of text that came from my heart, and carries a lot of value and memories is no less than a podium to me. This blog and its content are the medals that represent how far I've come especially when I doubt if I am behind in life.
So thank you if you've come this far and best of luck for your ventures. I hope you got to learn something valuable from my blog.
🔥Remember: Never Compare your Chapter 1 to someone's Chapter 20.