Friday, June 11, 2021

Meet a recent Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador graduate: Arpita Gupta

This series highlights Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone and have recently graduated from university. Each blog features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassadors community, and what they’re up to now. 

 

Today we’d like to introduce Arpita Gupta, who is from India and recently graduated from Vellore Institute of Technology in Vellore, India. 

 

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Responses have been edited for clarity and length. 

 

When you became a Student Ambassador in the fall of 2019, did you have any specific goals you wanted to reach, like attain a skill or work on a particular quality? What were they, and did being a Student Ambassador help you achieve them? 

 

My main aim when I joined the program was to enhance my technical skills and knowledge. I wanted to explore different fields and then choose the right one for me. I particularly found my interest in the field of machine learning and learnt a lot of new things. 

 

The program has also helped me in my overall personality development. I have become more confident and tenacious. The Student Ambassador community provided me a lot of opportunities to interact with like-minded people all across the globe which helped me grow as an individual. 

 

What are the accomplishments that you’re the proudest of and why?  

 

In April 2020, I got a chance to conduct a session in the Global AI Virtual Tour where I covered the basics of machine learning. The main purpose was to pique interest of students unaware of the field. I wanted my session to be not just informative but to pave the way for beginners. While preparing for the talk, I learnt a lot of new things.  For example, I got to know about different libraries, their usage and working, and I understood machine learning through real-life examples, like that even in minute things like filtering spam and non-spam mails, machine learning is used. Machine Learning is such a vast field that has absolutely no bounds. The more we dive into it, the more there is to learn.  

 

In the session, I also covered how to complete a Microsoft Learn path [editor's note: this is one of the initial milestones of the Student Ambassador program]. A lot of new Student Ambassadors wanted to know how to complete a Learning path and the correct approach to it. As my session was specifically for beginners and students who wanted to get into the field of machine learning, I decided to cover a learning path along with some basic explanations in my session. Not only it would help the students understand the subject theoretically but practically as well.  

 

Apart from this, I have also conducted other events in college and online as well. All of them were a huge success with a good number of audience members. I am just glad that I was able to help so many students who wanted to learn and are passionate about tech.  

 

Another accomplishment that I am proud of is when my team got ranked as first runner-up in one of the web-a-thons hosted by my college when I was in my sophomore year. We made a comparative e-commerce website user interface. Although I didn’t know a lot of things back then, I tried to develop something new with whatever knowledge I had.  While working on this project, I learnt a lot of things like integrating APIs with the website and worked on a lot of new technologies like Javascript, bootstrap etc. 

 

What do you have planned now that you’ve graduated?  What’s next for you after university? 

 

After my graduation, I will be joining F5 Networks, an American company that specializes in application delivery networking and application security.  I’ll be in Hyderabad working as a Software Engineer where I will get to experience the ins and outs of the corporate world. Understanding and working on different networking technologies is absolutely amazing, and I am looking forward to this amazing experience. 

 

If you could redo your time with the Student Ambassadors community, is there anything you would have done differently? 

 

My only regret is that I didn’t join this community sooner. I got to know about this program in my third year. If I had known about this program earlier, I would have joined it before. As a result, I missed a lot of sessions and informative workshops which I could have attended. 

 

Another thing that I would redo is to spend more time in this program’s activities in my fourth year. Due to certain circumstances during lockdown and also because of my placements, I was not able to spend enough time conducting events and sessions or attending them. If I could turn back time, I would manage my time more efficiently in order to take part in more sessions and events. 

 

If you were to describe the community to a student who is considering joining, what would you say to convince them to join? 

 

I would like to say that if you are passionate enough about technology, then this is the right platform for you. There is a lot to learn, and there are a lot of opportunities that this program provides. So come join us, grab them, and become a better version of yourself. 

 

And what advice would you give to new Student Ambassadors? 

 

There are mainly 2 things that I would like to advise all the newly joined Student Ambassadors: 

  1. Be active in the community: Taking my own example, it took me quite some time to open up to my peers and to become active in the community. But the more you interact, the more you learn. All the students in this community are here to help one another. So interact with others, learn and grow together. 
  2. Don’t be scared of making mistakes: No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Someone who is afraid to fail has never tasted success. So embrace your failures instead of backing out of hard work. Mistakes hone your skills. 

Do you have a motto in life, a guiding principle that drives you? 

 

We learn more from failures than from success. Don’t let it stop you. Failure builds character. 

 

Lastly, on a lighter note, can you share one random fun fact about you that not many people know? 

 

A fun fact about me is that I love travelling and exploring new places. It helps me to relax and take some time off from my daily routine. I also get to know about the culture and lifestyle of the people living in different regions of the country. Hence, traveling is fun. 

 

Thank you, Arpita, and good luck to you in all your future endeavors! 

Posted at https://sl.advdat.com/3zl6HCy