I am halfway through college, so I decided to write a blog to document my experience. I started my college journey at Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University For Women (IGDTUW) in January 2022. Just like any other kid, I began by watching videos on how to make the most out of college, what things to be careful about, etc. xD — all because I wanted to make the most of my college life (and perhaps because I was a bit disappointed about not performing as well as I’d hoped in JEE). I had many questions about how to get started, what I should prioritize, and what’s important, and I’m grateful to have great seniors here at IGDTUW to guide me through it. I attended numerous sessions on a wide range of topics, aiming to explore as much as possible and say “yes” most of the time. Yep, I want to try out everything, and I was (or maybe I am) quite impatient about it :P. In this blog, I’m attempting to document what I’ve explored and learned up to my 4th semester in college. I’ve broken it down into several parts:

1. Technical Development & Hackathons

2. Data Structures and Algorithms

3. College Societies

4. College Studies and Maintaining CGPA :,-)

5. Technical Events and Communities

1. TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT & HACKATHONS

Most of my development journey revolves around hackathons and being a part of technical clubs. I learned web development (MERN) cause I saw most people doing this :P, and gradually I found it a very fun thing to do! I started with making a simple HTML/CSS page for my very first hackathon and then joined a technical club where I went on to build the frontend part of a website using React.js. I found React.js very fun, I made some more projects using React.js and then felt a need to learn the backend so that I could build a complete project. I started learning Node.js and MongoDB and after that, I tried out Firebase (and I regretted not starting it before, it is so easy!).

Apart from this, I tried building a Unity 3D game in the technical fest of my college (that backfired very badly cause I already had my plate full at that time and thus, it became just way too hectic, but anyway got to touch upon game development a bit) and around that time I also attended a Spark AR workshop and tried it out making Instagram filters. After that, I tried out a little bit of web scraping and tried to get the latest postings on the career portals of some companies. So that was pretty much about the development journey for now (surely a long way to go). I want to be decent at one tech stack and touch upon various others.

Talking about my hackathon journey, I am not the person who participated in my first hackathon and won it. I failed multiple times :,) and each time there was something I learned. And finally, all that learning has started to pay off now. This year, I won a hackathon and was among the Top 45 in the Google Girl Hackathon. This meant a lot to me!

2. Data Structures and Algorithms

I started DSA with a paid course before my college started (don’t ask me why, even I don’t know :,) ) and after my college started, I left DSA for a more shiny thing — yep, Development (not fully left it but I wasn’t very consistent). Huge mistake :,) but I got myself on track from 2nd year onwards.

I read somewhere that we should do multiple approaches for the same question rather than doing multiple questions with the same approach and this has been the pillar in my DSA practice. My focus is more on the quality of questions over quantity, understanding patterns, and being consistent. The resources I have used till now include — Leetcode lists (which you can find in the discuss section) and Striver’s sheets — for a topic I am weak in, I practice Leetcode lists + Striver’s A2Z sheet, for topics I am comfortable with I usually do SDE sheet + explore more patterns.

3. College Societies

I started off by joining almost every active technical society in my college, (cause I didn’t want to miss out on anything :P), I explored the communities, and how they worked, connected with a lot of people and learned about various things I could do. In my second year, I narrowed it down to only three societies since things were getting hectic as the roles for the second years demanded more time. The main society I was (and I am) involved with is Lean In. First I was a mentee here and now I have become a core member.

As a core member, I got a chance to hold events, make content, and reports, track and organize things, take the lead of various sessions and activities, and even organize a big hackathon with 800+ participants! Being in a society really helped me shape other areas of my life. It helped me grow personally and connect to like-minded people in my college. If your college has active societies, then do join them, they are not a waste of time cause you get a chance to develop your personality, work in a team and learn management skills while having fun :)

4. Technical Events and Communities

I attended various technical events (both online and offline) and it helped me broaden my knowledge, get inspired by people around and get to know new opportunities. I get to know about such events on WhatsApp groups, Twitter and sometimes on LinkedIn. I also got a chance to volunteer at the Delhi FOSS Meetup in January 2023 which was a whole new experience. In April 2023, I got selected as a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador and now I have been active there, learning Azure and recently I hosted my first session on “Chatbot Building using Azure Bot service”. It is a nice community where we get to learn Microsoft technologies, collaborate on projects and host sessions. Technical events are a great place to get inspired and be aware of the latest trends in technology.

5. College Studies and CGPA

Ughh the worst part. My branch is Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) and I found it tough to maintain a decent CGPA, currently, it is 8 (not very good but works since most companies allow it). Subjects aren’t that difficult to understand but they are just too vast. I am very grateful to have supportive friends who help me through it. I study around 10 days before my mid-semester and 20-30 days before end-semesters. I try not to participate in any hackathon, or take up any other thing during this time and the focus is completely on grades. Also, I try to be positive about it and convince myself that I am getting to learn the software as well as the hardware. I know it’s just the theory but sometimes it is fun to learn that so and so are the things going on at the back of a complex electronic device. (I am crying for most of the part but sometimes these things do excite me :P)

So, that’s all about my college journey till now! Let’s see what 3rd and 4th years hold fingers crossed. Thank you for reading it till the very end :)