Freshman Year

It all formally started with the First Day of August 2018, I came to the Campus of College of Engineering Kidangoor,the Lush Green Campu🌳🌲 and the Meenachil River🌊 were something totally new for me. New people,new place, New possibilities….

Pre-College Drama

But most of the beginning of College for me started about 2 months ago after my entrance examination. Oh, I was totally sure I’d come here in Kidangoor as my performance in exams was way off the charts and this was my only best option for Engineering.
So I started researching. I searched in every social media I could find, I checked Facebook,Instagram,Twitter,Youtube and Even GitHub(there was nothing much there:sweaty_smile:). I also found about one of my seniors in school who was studying here,I had contacted him and asked for his feedback(He is now known by Chacko/Albin) It was this time I’ve found about technical communities in Kochi and Kottayam. I’ve joined a Telegram group from Kottayam and asked if anyone was fron CE Kidangoor, I’ve got a reply from Joseph who is a senior here. He was the second person I’ve met before college.Later on I met Gokul Bro and EC Chechi.
After joining college I met Abhinav, he was the second person I met from my Class.He still remains to be my best bud.

First Meetup

Fast forward a Few weeks, I went for my First Meetup.I met Abhijith Bro and Akshay chettan and many others there. They were all astonished to see a first year boy in an Intro to ML workshop. It was totally awesome to meet them and to visit Kochi.

Class and College

Class was totally boring but Classmates were totally cool and the college had an another level of Vibe. I loved going to college not for the classes but for just being there for the Vibe. No, There was no special girl there(not even now😅

Open Source📦

I had made an account in GitHub in Ju ly but it became active in mid September. Me and Abhinav had a plan to make the Python Programs for the programming lab Open Source for the future students. Abhinav was the Free Software guy then and I was the Open Source guy. We together with some seniors made the Open Source Community here.
My mentor GKS told me the value of the GitHub profile and I made repos for the silliest of things(even now 😁).This was the first time I explored GitHub, Learned Git, and found out about the Campus Experts Program.I applied for the Student Developer pack in October and got it. This was also the time I E-met Musthaq Ahamed he is totally cool and one of the awesomest guys I have met. He is one of the most patient guys I have known,oh how much I annoyed him with my messages and If were in his position I would’ve snapped long ago. I completed Hacktoberfest too.

First Hackthon and Sticker💻

The funny thing is that I never attended any Hackathon. I organized one without any prior knowledge with my seniors in December first as Local Hack Day from MLH. That was the first time I got a sticker for myself and an octocat, Oh how I wished to get one.

Octocats and stickers are cool

This was also when I organized a workshop,2 people from my class came and the rest were all seniors.

My seniors are Cool and Super Awesome

Post-University Exams🎓

Damn,Calculus was rough

I went again to a handfull of workshops and talks, I contributed to some Open Source Repositories in GitHub. I joined TinkerHub, which is a community spread throughout Kerala and is growing rapidly. In the mean time I met Subin who was a core contributor to KeraLinux and FOSS guy,Sreeram the Android Guy, Pranav who helped me with one of my projects amd Kiran the Web Dev also with Abhijith the Pythonista and Devdutt the IEEE guy. I also had the oppurtunity to meet Dr.Richard Stallman,the father of the GNU project(Got stickers). I also met an Engineer who was working in GitLab and attendes his talk on how he got the job with Open Source.

School of AI

This was the first best thing for the Technical community in Kottayam apart from the clubs in Colleges. This was totally an Independant community which is managed by different people in different colleges. I am one of the organizers here. For our first meetup, I met Sharad bro,Chrisbin,Namitha and Akshaya Chechi and Rushtam.

To Linux🐧

Abhinav had now became a super Cyber Security guy and installed Linux on a 160GB HDD of mine. Using linux is Bliss. I am not fond of using windows now but I dont hate Microsoft. I also moved from Python to Js.

The 5 month Long CE Journey🚩

I had applied for Campus Experts program in the Latter Half of October and Got Selected in the First week of November. In their website there was a map of showing the Campus Experts around the world,and couldn’t find anyone from Kerala there this made me apply for it. I met Manu S Pillai who was a CE from Kerala and was living in Delhi. Yep he was a Python guy.
On March’s first Sunday I got a mail saying(in a way) that I have become a Campus Expert I was on CloudNine when I saw this. Later that week,I met Lieke Boon who was the Student Program Manager at GitHub via video call. She explained to me about how the program works and related matters in a 30min call. I’ve met other CEs in our messaging platform and yes they are Totally cool. Some of the Indian CEs were from IITs,NITs and IIITs and there was me who was from a Tier3 college in a small corner of Kerala and I felt so honoured to be here.

Meenachil Hacks

By this time I met Samanyu Bro and Akshay Bro in college who are my seniors and Samanyu bro is the Lead of InfinCEK another technical community here. Akshay bro is the Web Developer here and he is one of the awesomest people in college.Me with another 10 people put forward for Meenachil Hacks. We made a website got stickers and funding for the event and it is going to be in August 2019.

Swag Count💖

• 4 Tees(Hacktoberfest, Devfolio, DigitalOcean, Algolia)
• 1 Pajama(GitLab)
• 1 Hoodie (GitHub)
• 1 Backpack (GitHub)
• 1 Cap(Gatsby)
• 1 Pendrive (Google AI)
• 2 Key chain (ICFOSS, Algolia{bottle opener})
• 4 costers(Dribble and StickerMule)
• 50+ Stickers from Various companies and Communitues
• 960 contributions in GitHub, more than anyone in College