Introduction

Hello folks, I'm back with another blog, this time, on a tad bit of reflection and retrospection on how far am I from becoming the person I once had aspired to become when I joined the tech field as a student.

A #SetbackSunday on what inspired me to join tech

My name is Abhilipsa Sahoo, or as oftentimes my online persona likes to be called as, Abelisaurus. Currently, I'm a 6th semester B.Tech Undergraduate student at Gandhi Institute for Technological Advancement, Bhubaneswar. My domain of focus is Computer Science & Engineering. But almost around 5 years ago, in 2018, I was a student of D.A.V Public School, Unit-VIII, strategizing a rebellion against my mother (who, by the way, is a lecturer in Botany) in order to pursue Computer Science in my 11th & 12th Standard (or +2, as we call it popularly).

How I discovered my passion, you ask?

I belong from Odisha, one of the under privileged states in India where female literacy is mostly lower than the national average. Usually in a non-metropolitan city like the one that I belong to, the women, for several generations in almost every household, have been constantly fed socio-cultural conditioning that contributes to alienating them from the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics). Although pursuing higher education is fundamental to individual empowerment, development and self-reliance, and is almost a necessity in today's era, it was difficult for women back then to pursue higher education at all, let alone in STEM. My mother could only complete her M.Phil, but she got married soon after, and has been pushing back her PhD because of several expenses and responsibilities that come with making (and maintaining) a family. So has been the story of my father, who has completed his MBA.

Coming from an educated, middle class family, I acknowledge my privilege of being able to study in a public school like D.A.V and develop early an enthusiasm towards programming. I remember sitting beside my cousin brother and solving data structure problems to improve my logic building during my 11th and 12th standard. Although, my journey as a Computer Science student began with a mere disinterest in Biology and my attempts to avoid it in my +2, it gradually changed its course as I began feeling a deep interest and respect for the subject.

Studying Computer Science not only honed my problem solving and logic building skills, but also broadened my perspective towards the reason behind the large gap in the male and female student-strength in our class. It took time to deconstruct the stereotype ingrained in my brain such as women are not "made" for such complex field, whereas men are naturally good with tech. I also realised that many girls are not made aware, nor encouraged to generate passion for tech from a tender age (unlike their male counterparts), which is why they hold on to Computer Science as their last straw to avoid other optional subjects but then are unable to develop true passion and respect for the subject. This is also why young female students, post school, in massive numbers, branch out to pursue different non-tech degrees and career prospects—leading to lack of women in tech. Certain factors also include upbringing, social norms & culture, personal choice, different social expectations, etc.

I believed (and still do) that tech is something more than just developing products and services, it is about looking at those products and services from different perspectives to ensure that these technological innovations do not get weaponised against any section of the society or the nature/earth.

How it's going...

Technology is a huge responsibility, and therefore requires multiple and diverse viewpoints to understand its effect on the earth and its people. When one section of the society is told to sit back, it becomes difficult to develop unbiased innovations with narrowed perspectives.

Looking at my mother who is ever enthusiastic about nature, I have always wanted to use and perhaps contribute to the creation of technology for the greater good of the Earth. When I entered college, I found role models in handful of my female seniors who inspired me to get into open-source, and in 2022, through Moja Global organisation, I discovered a new way to contribute to impactful technologies that could help revolutionize the fight against climate change. To know more about my Open-Source Journey, you can read my blog: My Journey Through Open-Sourcery.

Since then, my journey has been quite steady. There are times when impostor syndrome kicks in, other times I feel proud of the choices I have made in life. There have also been times where I have been pretty inconsistent with my work, and other times I worked too hard and burnt out. But these are mere signals that your body wants to send to you, sort of distress calls. Want to decipher your body's messages? You can take a look at my blog: Debugging The Brain.

During my journey, I also came across a new aspect of programming languages: those of experiential and conceptual types, basically Esolangs. I also read a couple of research papers on this topic, gave a talk in my class and wrote blogs basing on it, that you can find in my Esolangs series.

Honestly, I'm just trying to be the best version of myself everyday, and that's all that matters for now.

My first quarter of 2023 (unpacking 25%...)

Let me talk about how my journey has been thus far:

January

January marked the second month of my first paid internship at a startup. I learnt new technologies, worked on the frontend of their application and their SDK, documented several integrations, and attended community building events on Saturdays. January taught me how to balance between work and personal life, and deal with heavy burnout.

Also, I got selected as a mentor for Social Winter of Code 2023.

February

I began my journey of technical blogging in February with WeMakeDevs challenge associated with Hashnode. I came across an amazing platform as Hashnode that made me realise:

There is a thin line between technical blogging and technical documentation writing. Tech blogging helps me cleanse my brain and express my thoughts and ideas, right after cleaning the dirty laundry that technical documentation is considered to be.

You know, the dirty laundry that everyone needs to be washed, dried, ironed and folded, yet nobody wants to do it all by oneself. Documentation writers do it for ya!

I won the Open-Source track prize. See the tweet below, if you don't believe. 🥳

I was definitely over the moon for sometime, and definitely loved my Hashnode Tshirt. I also took part in several hackathons and ideathons, and tried to build projects centering women healthcare.

March

My mentorship ended for Social Winter of Code for several frontend repositories, especially, "Front-End Projects" repository under project admin Tushar Kesarwani.

I also enrolled myself in AWS Skill Builder program for AWS Training and Certification.

In March, I was recognised as a noteworthy blogger for one of my blogs by Hashnode, for its February Debugging Writeathon. See the below tweet:

March also marked the beginning of upcoming months filled with community building and engagement events. I attended Flutter Forward Extended on March 5, 2023 organised by Google Developer Groups (GDG) Bhubaneswar and GDG Cloud Bhubaneswar.

Then, on March 26, I got to attend the International Women's Day event organised by GDG Bhubaneswar and WTM Bhubaneswar.

April

April was also indeed a productive month for me. I won the Special Track Prize for WeMakeDevs x Hashnode March 2023 challenge.

In April, I also got my first paid gig as a technical blogger and received Rs 1800. 🥳 Firsts are always special!

I also received The Dan Kohn Scholarship for VIRTUAL attendance of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023, that took place April 19 - 21, 2023. KubeCon is CNCF's flagship conference that gathers technologists and enthusiasts from leading open-source communities and cloud native communities for education, information and learning.

Then, I also got to attend G20 precursor event held in CSIR IMMT Bhubaneswar on Transforming Logistics For Coastal Economies. The main motto behind the event was to encourage the future stakeholders of the country is to skill, reskill and upskill.

I also got to attend the Exhibition/Expo on cutting-edge technologies meeting sustainability.

The G20 FutureOfWork Expo showcased India's commitment to leverage technology for high quality of education and training. The exhibition portrayed a shining example of the country's efforts to prepare today's youth for the challenges of tomorrow.

And, as a cherry on the cake, I recently got to attend the workshop on Leadership and Entrepreneurship for Women in Tech workshop organised by GDG Bhubaneswar and WTM Bhubaneswar at IIIT Bhubaneswar.

My inner pop-culture enthusiast bagged a prize in a Pop-culture Trivia.

That's all about my 25% of 2023.

Tips

• The longer I spent my time as a student involved in technical field, I realised that apart from scholarships and diversity perks, we lack proper resources that can imbibe the curiousity in young girls in schools towards Tech. This can help disrupt the disparity from the root. Teaching young girls to code, introducing them to cutting edge technologies and encouraging them to ideate and innovate to solve problems that their own community faces, at an early age, can solve this problem to a certain extent. Hackathons can bridge that gap.

• We must set ourselves as good role models for young women to look up to and draw inspiration from.

Women and non-binary folks should be provided opportunities not only on the basis of their gender solely, but also because they deserve that opportunity every bit despite their gender, and only skills can help them prove that to the world.

Thank you for reading!