ScholarX 2020 experience: August
Greetings everyone! This is my second journal entry regarding my ScholarX 2020 experience. As a recap to my previous entry, I was conducted into the mentorship program in the month of May and was assigned mentor Dr. Nadeesha Chandrasena along with 4 other mentees. While the quarantine continued during the months since then, the country started to get back to a semblance of normalcy. With online lectures continuing to be conducted every week, the month of June and the first weeks of July were the busiest and most stressful period of this year for me so far. This was due to the reason that as the semester was coming to a close, we were bombarded with assignments as well as the finalization of several semester projects. Additionally, we had our final year project work to attend to whose activity spiked during these months.
While these academic aspects were demanding most of my attention, the ScholarX mentorship program sometimes faded away from memory. However, that is not to say that the mentorship program was stale. Our mentor kept in contact with us during these months. Knowing that most of us were in fields that were in the computing industry, she was keen to connect us with her contacts of said industry to enrich our mentorship. She also encouraged us to create and share plans for the upcoming six months. which forced us to materialize our goals on paper. As a final year undergraduate who has a choice to make on which path to go after graduation, I found this helpful. While this was going on, I also knew that she was paying individual attention to people of our mentorship group who needed more immediate guidance given her expertise in the field of research.
So, while these months were not packed with activity or meetings in the ScholarX program, it still proved to be fruitful.
