My recent answer on Quora motivated me to complete this impending blog post. I hope my post inspires every woman who reads this to apply for this scholarship and get more involved with their community to encourage more women to code.
How this started?
My journey with this scholarship started when one of my friends posted a link to this scholarship on the Whatsapp group of our class. I recall our exams were scheduled to start in the next few days and here I was at home, compiling answers to the questions, designing my resume and scanning my mark sheets. My mother, in fact, had scolded me then, when she saw me collecting my mark sheets and had angrily reprimanded me because she felt that I had already spoiled my half semester with other college activities, and I should stop that at least for now and concentrate on my exams (Indian parents! :D).
Amidst all this, I had successfully submitted this application with little idea about everything except the fact that I will get to be in a Google Office. Yes, that was the only reason back then that was motivating me to submit this application.
Later, in the month of July, I received an email which stated that I have a telephonic interview scheduled within the next few days. It took me a day to figure out what exactly this was for and when had I applied for it. The first thing that I did then was to rush to my mother and told her don’t scold me next time when I am doing my work. Then, got back to completing my Training and Placement related work for the college with no fear of her scolding me ever again for this.
How I prepared?
I did my little homework before the interview. Re- read the answers to the questions that I had submitted. Then, went through my resume and projects. Not to forget, made sure my mobile was fully charged. Since, the scholarship mentioned that it is based on the academic and leadership achievement of an individual, I also re- visited some of the challenges that I had faced with the teams that I have led in college and how I worked on overcoming them.
The Interview
The interview concentrated on the technical projects that I had mentioned in my resume. I had a good discussion about the technical stack I had been working on and the future scope of some of my projects.
The interview also consisted of questions like my one biggest achievement, how do I plan to use resources of a large organization like Google to encourage more women in technology. Since, this is what I had been largely been supporting over the last three years, so it didn’t require much effort just some honest answers.
The Result
A week passed and with every passing day I used to be a little more worried about the result. It was the night of 1st August’ 2016 when I received the email from Google confirming my selection.
When I told about this to my mother especially about the fact that I am one of the 50 selected women across ASIA- PACIFIC to receive this, the memory of tears rolling down her cheeks is still so well captivated with me. Meanwhile, when I informed this to my uncles and aunts- “Are you sure this is not a mischief and no one is trying to dupe you?” (The kind of scams that ask you to share your bank account details so that Mr. Clooney who will soon be dead can transfer 1 lakh to your account :D). I had to share links with them of this scholarship program to make them accept that I am not fooling them.
The Retreat at Google Office, Hyderabad, India
We had our Retreat towards the end of August 2016. The team from Google had made really exciting arrangements. We had our accommodation arranged at Avasa, Hyderabad (The Hotel was beautiful). No two people from the same country shared the same room. My roomie was from Thailand.
We used to have our breakfast and lunch at the Google office. The pancake and the waffle I had there has been the tastiest one so far (Dear Reader, if you are from Google, then please invite me for a breakfast at your office someday. :D). Please note that the team at Google was equally conscious of us gaining weight, so they made us start the sessions of the day with a 20 minutes Zumba dance (Although, that still couldn’t compensate for those 4 extra kilograms that I had gained during those three days. :P).
We had sessions which were about bias busting, the work culture at Google, Tech talks about the next big technology being worked upon at Google, mock interview workshop, and my favorite- the session on becoming better at presentations. Post our daily sessions, we used to have an outing. We visited the Taj Falaknuma Palace on Day 1 and the Golkonda Resort on Day 2. The Karaoke nights were one of the most entertaining ones. On Day 3, we built our own robots. So, we not only had sessions where we learned but we also got the chance to do what everyone in that room absolutely loved i.e. code.
My Experience
Post the Google Retreat, my journey has shaped up in a way that I had not ever thought about back in 2014 when I had started the first programming club at my college to motivate girls to participate in competitive programming competitions which over the time I had nurtured to become more inclusive and include promoting open source and other computer science related events too. The idea was to code be it through competitions, hackathons or open source organizations. Today, we have a community in college which talks about GSoC, ACM- ICPC, which was a distant reality back then, when I had completed my freshmen year at college. The Google Retreat enlightened me with a vision for the related future work, when after two years of working on this I was left with little idea on how to scale up this initiative.
This scholarship has been the best inspirational and motivational journey for me.
It gave me an opportunity of meeting women from across the world (Asia- Pacific in my case). It familiarized me with their culture practices better. I learned more about how courageously women across the globe are fighting the gender biases and becoming advocates to encourage more women in computing. I came across women there who are working in every field one can think of from Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing to women who are developing amazing Website, iOS, and Android applications. I am sure there cannot be any other better place to meet women from almost every computer science field, who are not only ready to help you in becoming better at what you love but also promise to inspire you to help other women too.
I am now a part of a network which has some really fantastic Googlers and women working in the field of Computer Science. I am the part of a fraternity which also has past scholars from all over the world who make me realize that I shouldn’t forget to involve my local community from high school/ college in this process of development.
So, if you ask me what was it like to receive the Google Anita Borg Scholarship? I will say that “The word awesome undermines this happiness and sense of achievement”.
The Message
The best opportunities are always a submission away. If you are a woman who is reading this, if you relate to the vision of Anita Borg or any other woman in technology whom you admire and if you wish to grow this community to be more powerful, then don’t forget to apply for this scholarship once the application opens for your region. :)
Time for some photographs
This greeted us when we reached our room on arrival.
Receiving the certificate on the final day of the Retreat.
My team members and group mentors with our robot.
The last photographs when it was finally time for some of us to leave. :(
The swags that we received during the retreat. We got a GoPro. Yay!
Below is a group photograph of the Anita Borg Scholars 2016.
P.S.- The Google Anita Borg Scholarship has been renamed to Google Women TechMakers Scholarship.