ScholarX 2020 experience: May
Hello everyone, this is my overall experience relating to the first month as a mentee in the ScholarX 2020 program conducted by the Sustainable Education Foundation (SEF). My introduction to this organization came in late 2018 through Mrs. Dinu Kumarasiri who conducted a session for my fellow undergraduates from the University of Moratuwa, Department of Computer Science and Engineering about aspects we should be aware of in interviews and approaching internship/job opportunities in the international level. As an undergrad who was about to face his internship and in May 2019 and had no notion regarding how to approach internships locally and internationally, I’m thankful for her as she encouraged us to be more proactive in interacting and following organizations such as SEF and attending webinars and meetups. I immediately followed the SEF Facebook page the same day and started putting some of her advice into play. However, I did not know that they were about to conduct a program such as ScholarX in 2019 and as I don’t visit Facebook regularly, I missed the announcement of this. I received knowledge about this program after it had commenced in 2019 through Tarindu, one of my most regular hangs in uni who I introduced SEF to as well as a past 2019 ScholarX mentee. The same day I visited their page and as instructed there, emailed them regarding my interest in being a part of this program.
Several months went by and my internship was finished successfully and I had forgotten all about SEF and ScholarX. One day in March 2020 I received an email from SEF inviting me to apply for the ScholarX 2020 program which had a larger group of mentors compared to 2019. Me and Tarindu (Who also wanted to see this year’s mentors) checked out the list of mentors and I decided on a few choices of mentors and applied for the program. Several weeks passed and ScholarX 2020 became buried once again under a lot of final year activities until the end of April 2020. Here I received an email stating that I had been accepted into the program. However, it also notified me that the mentor assigned to me was not one of the choices I had requested in my application. I thought that since I had been assigned a mentor who was not from the computing industry that a mistake has been made in their part, but I still decided to contact my mentor and let her know I’m looking forward to the mentorship. I surmised that even though my mentor; Dr. Nadeesha Chandrasena was not from the same field, her mentorship would still be very beneficial given her series of impressive accomplishments. At the first commencement meeting which had all the ScholarX 2020 mentees, we were informed that indeed several mentees were in fact not assigned their mentees of choice or field because of the large number of requests but we were also encouraged to get the most out of the mentors assigned to us. I was happy to know that I was one of the select few who got accepted into the program out of the many many applicants.
While this was taking place, the entire country was under lockdown from the highly infectious COVID-19 pandemic that has made its way to us. As many of you know, most everyone was confined to their homes, and their lives drastically affected. Thus unsurprisingly, it took almost a week for a response from Dr. Nadeesha who explained regarding her hectic quarantine week but wanted to get to know more details about us to start. I explained to her my interests in computer science and mathematics and about my career interests in intersecting areas of Data Science, Data Mining, and Big Data applications. A couple of weeks later, I along with the mentees under her introduced ourselves to each other and set up the first meeting with her. There were 4 other mentees along with me. Dedunu and Imtaad are two 3rd year undergrads from the University of Moratuwa, Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (ENTC), Ranjula is an immediate senior from to me from ENTC and also a graduate student, and Windhula is a 2nd year Civil Engineering undergrad from University of Sri Jayawardenepura.
Truth be told, being buried under lectures and assignments from uni as well as the multitude of online courses I had enrolled in during the quarantine, I forgot about the meeting until the day it was taking place. All of us; Dedunu, Imtaad, Ranjula, Windhula, and I introduced ourselves at the video conference. Each of us talked about how we have been spending time in quarantine, our interests relating our fields, our ambitions including prospective internship places (For 3rd-year undergrads). Dr. Nadeesha was keen to offer her thoughts in our ambitions, encouraging us to start planning our journey for the next couple of years. Moreover, she advised in with her expertise in what and how to look for prospective organizations to intern or work in while also offering help in reviewing our resumes targetted for a specific organization/institution.
All in all, I’m happy to say that the ScholarX experience has been pleasant and insightful so far and I’m looking forward to seeing how the program continues!
