SheCodes

This is a typical millennial story, in the sense that it began on Twitter. Between the memes and the drama I saw a tweet about something called SheCodes. I hesitated at first but then I was like, why not, I’ve got nothing to lose – it’s only an application. I filled out the form, hit send and forgot about it. I mean, I really forgot about it. A month later I got a text saying I had an interview in a few days. I did the interview.

The course was basically made for women – that is the SHE part. It was the CODES part that was tricky.

We got to know each other on the first day. I loved how everyone came from a different background. Although we were all students, though some were new graduates. There were medical students (including myself), English students, engineering students, and the smart IT girls of course. We all had different interests, some liked cooking, others drawing. Some loved anime and others loved poetry. We had a few writers, a few teachers and a few dancers.

We learned the concepts, and then started working on the Udacity online Labs. A few days later we were working on the Android Studio. This can be a bit frustrating. We might have shed a few tears, but I don’t want to talk about that. It’s kind of messy.

Apparently putting the two simple words ‘Hello World’ up on a screen required a lot more than just typing them in. You had open tags and attributes, LinearLayouts, and parents and children, suddenly it was turning into a Dickens novel.

My very first attempt at creating an app was called ‘Once Upon a Time’. It’s a bookstore advert that announced a reading event for Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

Then we started learning how to make a basketball scoreboard. This was also more complicated than ‘Hello world!’ You have to use multiple buttons, TextViews and Java code to do the math for you. ‘Why am I learning this?’ someone asked me the other day. Well, why not? Learning is limitless, and I’m learning something new every day.

Nora Ephron, an American author, screenwriter and director once told the Washington Post: ‘Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: You can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands.’

Special thanks to the SheCodes team for giving me this opportunity. I will be forever grateful.