TechKaro: Through a Student’s eye
This is a text montage and what goes behind the TechKaro program to success for students!
Trying to fit in the new virtual environment, giving chances to new opportunities in 2020, a pandemic year, knowing it was my first ever virtual course, I braced myself to start TechKaro’s student journey from being interviewed as before any selection process [a basic requirement for every program]. There I applied for the Coding course they were offering alongside Graphic Designing and Digital Marketing courses.
Interview hacks:
- Get good grades for the pre-admission test.
- Didn’t achieve good grades? No problem. But remember whatever you wrote to support your answers to the written questions they asked you during the test.
- Be confident but be optimistic and determined to continue to strive hard for such programs!
A little PSA:
TechKaro, CIRCLE will now be selecting dedicated students for their different programs in March. SO gear up from now!
Next, if you’re a good fit in their candidate list you can get an email, but I was lucky enough to be selected as a Team Lead for Team Kalam there, for my name has roots with Kalam now.
As a leader I was confused in the beginning, but do we stop there? NO. We came to slowly progress along with the team, teachers, and mentors at our service [A student’s support] with a single slogan “we got you!”.
Our medium of communication and discussions were on Slack, and classes on Zoom. To later using WhatsApp and Facebook, to overcome students’ difficulties.
Considering the first baby steps to anything can be hard for a person who hasn’t seen the world yet. With prior knowledge only in HTML5 and CSS, I began to explore things with fire and spirit seeing my classmates and fellow Team leads progressing, and that’s where I understood to pick up the pace. At first, the concepts were pretty easy to grasp, later things started turning difficult to learn, from HTML5, CSS, to SASS [CSS Frameworks], Problem-solving, JS, Firebase, and React JS [all that it takes to become FrontEnd Web developer].In this period, getting to know the teachers, students, and teammates is inclusive!
Oh no, don’t “Aw snap” a lot used technical talk here. Cause what’s next is what you waited for [drum rolls]. We were on a weekly basis made to attend life skill sessions, from amazing speakers across the globe. Being a team lead in TechKaro, wasn’t a “Take this and do it” kind of responsibility. It was those training sessions, consoling sessions of the workload, Physical and mental preparations, which led me to a smooth process/way. A little rub on the back is what we were needed, which made us keep going.
In the months nearer to graduation, we were then brought into the final projects making use of the technologies we learned. They made available speakers/connections not only on national but also international level. Thus they went global to deliver talks, sessions, inductions, review sessions, mentor meetups, project evaluations of each team with individual speakers, devoting 3 hours of their time to — check, correct, suggest, and bring in their market experience of the product they’ve worked on, our speakers and mentors never let us down. So today if any of my front-end project(s) gets accepted or is wow-ed by someone I will credit those mentors. Much respect!
From CV/Resume writings, LinkedIn connection buildings, Evaluation of Major Projects to be shown to the world, were being validated by the team-Insiders. Every time a check on each team, listening to their feedback, taking constructive criticism resulting in consideration and betterment was their subject-matter towards making this program successful.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT SUBJECT: to all my beautiful ladies out there!
Sticking by the motto they gave importance to female students’ in the go. Separate sessions for women empowerment, listening to our stories from the hometown- As I remember sharing my experience of playing Basketball so far with ma’am Saddaffe Abid, founder of CIRCLE, in one of the TechKaro girls’ session, and how she made me realize, you ain’t stopping there Fatima, you still have a 3 pointer shot and a half-court to make in life!
Highlighted wonders of TechKaro on me:
- I am Officially a certified FrontEnd web Developer from TechKaro by CIRCLE.
- I now stand as a Google Developer Student Clubs (DSC) MUET, Jamshoro lead.
- I have currently enrolled myself into Jadu Programs for my journey continuation to Full Stack Development [leaving it for a separate blog].
- Got a chance to get featured as a successful TechKaro student not once but twice and the acknowledgment on their page filled up my heart with love!
- Being invited as an honorary count in SheLovesTech's First round of Lahore, among the top-notch Startup competitors presenting, I shared my journey at TechKaro virtually.
- Doing internships from Interns.pk.
- TechKaro helped me expand my horizons in networking with industry experts nationally and globally.
My CIRCLE features:
The takeaways and lessons learned:
Within 8 months, I am what TechKaro made me today: strong as a woman, leading communities, making progress, and never stopping anytime. There it is Fatima graduating with a journey of hardships, tests, trials, and amazing people, across the borders. I Will always remember the support I got from them thus TechKaro groomed the bigger me. Even If in life I reach places, I will still roll back to the time when I was playing around within the 4 virtual walls of TechKaro.
An emotional acknowledgment note to the TechKaro, CIRCLE:
Thank you to every TechKaro 2020 cohort class fellows, you guys are the real ones, may we stay connected and be the best of what we were to each other forever. This when I read again, a year, 2 or 3 later I will pay homage to this community.
If you read this till here, I find you grew the interest in my story, and if you’re not a part of TechKaro enroll yourself in one of their courses in March, and become the best version of you here and hit the deja-vu when you graduate to a day like I did, to read this again..and feel me at this point.
Stay updated about TechKaro here: https://www.facebook.com/circlewomen
Thank you and a huge shout out to the team:
Sadaffe Abid, Tuba Mohsin, Taley’a Mirza, Khairunnisa, Alvina Lakhani, Mashal Mehmood, Sehar Akbar, Rehan Shafiq, Asma Qadri
Short of mentions, there’s a massive team behind TechKaro by CIRCLE running; making sure everything’s good at the students’ end.
This is to you my beautiful TechKaro Family from Fatima Yousif- TechKaro 2020 alumni.
