A Girl born on Xmas🎄
A Story of Being Me💫
A girl who is excited to bring change in her life!
Change is something that everyone needs to have, whether it's changing their bad behavior, skills to apply somewhere, or anything because they want to do something better for their life and try to make their dreams happen.
Like others, I wanted to change my life and do something that excites me,
Luckily been born to a family who supports a girl’s education as well as a boy.
From very early in my life I have seen magical heavy boxs around me, who we called as Computers and I remembered I used to make paintings like ‘traditional house and in front of that green grass plus swing near to the house and a girl who is playing with a doll’ on MS Paints, 🎨🖌
I was not aware of MS Paints at that time as my brother used to open that software and select a paint area for me to do paintings.
With the passage of time I started playing games as well like Taken 3, Pepsi Man, Red Alert, and Mario and I’d like to say that Red Alert was my favorite.
But I never thought about how games are being made, Desktop applications, etc that time.
In matriculation, I had to choose between science or arts they were not offering majors in computers that time so I took science and with time I got to know Bio subjects are not up to my taste But yeah I cleared my exams and was looking forward to applying next into a different field!
My brother took the decision for me, even he filled my ‘Intermediate Computer Science’ (ICS) form and helped me to get into ICS. In the first year of college, they taught us about topologies, networks between computers, MS Excel, etc. When I was on my summer vacations break my brother asked me why don’t you explore programming, and I was like, Oh I don't know can you help me to find and he took a paper and wrote few languages name over there and then I started exploring HTML, CSS and I got interested into WordPress Development so I started designing and customizing websites then. I can say this was my lollipop moment made by my brother who changed my perception of seeing computers not only for games, then I got to know we can do beyond things with computers not only playing games on it.
As doing ICS I got to met many seniors and talk about programming stuff and one of the best seniors I had, was Irum Baji who helped me and motivated me a lot shaping my tech journey. In 2nd year, finally, we learned the C language.
I started reading blogs on technology, I selected my bachelor (BS )in Computer Science. I am not a top student at university but a normal one,
In the first year of my university, I came across a great opportunity that's called Developer Students Club Lead by Google Developers, from 1000+ applicants I got selected into 42 leads, I had great memories of my Google DSC Summit where I met Googlers, other leads, exchanges ideas, attended workshops like flutter development, web developments and Resume/CV and branding yourself etc.
After my DSC Journey, I applied for Microsoft Student Learn Ambassador and now I am Sr. MSLA.
My journey didn’t stop over there as I got to know the exciting opportunity that was similar to ‘Lambda School California’, yeah you heard me right!! I was so interested to apply in but they were not giving scholarships to Non-US folks, so back in March, I started with TechKaro.
Tech Karo by Circle 💻
It was 8 months long tech program that offers to learn web development and build projects along the way, they not only taught us technical skills but soft skills as well. (Hold on, I will write about my experience of TechKaro very soon :D until you can see our virtual meeting with CEO of CIRCLEWomen )
Internship at OutSprint
We had mentor meetups every month at TechKaro and one of my Mentor suggested me to apply for the UK based IT Company internship and I filled the form and after a few weeks I got an interview call (was shortlisted into 84 folks) I cleared my interview. And boom after a few weeks I got a congratulation mail from OutSprint. I must say my learning is going so well so far we are learning about the OutSystems Platform by Experts.
Maybe you have heard of Amal Academy? I got selected for the “Prep Career Fellowship program” which is supported by Stanford University and Pepsi Co. We are almost done with one month of learning and it's like yesterday I have joined in.
I believe you have to take responsibility for your happiness, your success, and where you want to see yourself in the future. Work for it, because, no one is gonna do it for you! 💯
You have to take the first step for yourself.
Ups and downs are part of life, sometimes we have to go through tough situations all alone and we have to keep patience and face difficulties.
The path to success looks straight but it is not!
We have to face challenges and have to work even harder in order to achieve something. We have to embrace our weaknesses and try to work on them to overcome them.
If someone says you are not good at something, prove them wrong not by telling like “Hey what you said, that is not true” but by taking actions and doing that thing wonderfully! So they get be surprised as well. 💌
Praise to be Allah(الحمد للہ), for everything I have! 💖
P.s It was an open letter to me on my birthday,
‘Look Khadija you have come this far and there’s a long way to go,
Keep going, you little tech-nerd!’ 🐣
Signing off, Thanks for reading!💞
Hey, wait.
let me share my surprise birthday cake picture,
aren’t desserts make you happiest like me?! 😍
Thanks to my family who made my 12:00 AM exceptional!! ❤ ❤
Yours in Coding,
Khadija Batool Gardezi
