Google-Udacity scholarship 2018

How it began

The day I fell in love with android development, I decided that I would make it my career. Udacity has helped me take my first crucial steps to get started with android development. Though it was a long journey, it was quite fruitful and I really enjoyed it. Recently I had participated in Microsoft’s code.fun.do and I completed a project(an android app). It was my first hackathon and it was my first major project. I and my team worked really hard for about a week and came up with an app which would help people get easy access to services like restaurants, service centres, rickshaws,etc. I used networking to retrieve the data from an API made by my team. It was the best week of my life.

My Goals

My professional goals include making applications to help people make their lives easier, reaching out to all people and helping them meet their needs(for example helping people solve public issues, warn them before a disaster strikes,etc), educate farmers, alert people if someone is in need of blood, help animals in need,etc.

I’m currently learning the basics and I would like to learn the intermediate and advanced concepts too. Android development has never failed to fascinate me. The creativity I can put into it, the joy I experience whenever my app works successfully, the joy of catching exceptions and dealing with them, the happiness I see on other people’s face when they use my app,etc these are few of the reasons why I love android development. I wanted to learn android development since my tenth grade, but never really got the time. One semester into my university, then in my winter vacation(December 2017) I made up my mind to start learning android development. Once I started it, I couldn’t stop. It was then that I realised my love for it.

I spent almost twelve hours per day learning all I could. I haven’t stopped learning since then. I was able to successfully complete the Android basics User interface, User interaction and Multi-screen apps courses in one month. Then I completed the networking course too parallel to my academics. After that I took part in the Microsoft’s code.fun.do and came up with my first successful project. Nothing made me happier than the feeling of coming up with my first android app.

The best email ever

Then through googling I found out about the Google-Udacity scholarships for the android track. I was really excited about it since it would be the turning point of my life. So I applied and I was eagerly waiting, and then on February 7th I received the best email of my life:

Congratulations Ankush! Hi Ankush, We are excited to offer you a Google India Challenge Scholarship for the Android Basics track. We received applications from many >talented and motivated candidates, and yours truly stood out.

                                Thank you Udacity and Google♥

My life has never been the same since that day. I have learnt a lot from the amazing community by helping others and also asking for help. The quizzes, challenges, collaborative projects,etc have been a wonderful learning experience where we learnt a lot of new things and also got to know a lot of new people.

So this was my amazing experience of how I got selected and how I participated in the program.