Sushiksha

This week’s topic: My Realizations from Quarter 1 of the Sushiksha Sophists’-year

After the sweet success of the Sushiksha Fest and the amount of fun we had in participating in it, it was pretty evident that such kind of team collaborated events not only were fun and exciting but were also highly educative and brought everyone together. So, when Royal announced that the entire workspace will be following a very similar trend soon and will develop into a team and house based friendly competition, it got all the sophists excited all over again. For me personally, I had led the team ‘Gomanthak Gladiators’ as a Champion for the Sushiksha Fest, and it was an enthralling experience for me. When I got a chance to be a champion another time, I grabbed it without a second thought.

Soon, everyone had picked their Champions and their teams and were ready to face off with all the other teams. My team had a total of 11 people, including me. The initial challenge for me was to break the ice among the members since some of them weren’t just new to the workspace, they were new to the other people as well. Having learnt from previous experience that the first thing a team member should know, is the other team members well. I decided to do this over a casual introduction and orientation session with all the members of the team, where everyone introduced themselves and got to know each other better. Followed by this, I decided to conduct several other get-used-to sessions for my team members, helping them and getting them acquainted with the functioning of the workspace and its tools, like Slack, OKRs, AirTable, Zoom, etc. Soon everyone was well at handling all these tools and were ready.

There was a very funny incident with respect to the name of our team. We weren’t instructed to name our team or decide a logo for it yet, a contrast to the Fest, where the team name, logo, and a Google site were the first tasks assigned to us. This time too, we were quite sure that we will be asked to do the same. So, we sat down and decided on names. We ended up calling ourselves, ‘The United XI’ XI standing for the roman numerical, 11. We also designed a logo, consisting of a shield and flaming wings at the side. We were ready with our preparation but then, Guru maam announced that the team names had to be something in an Indian dialect and a logo that has to fit inside the predesigned House crest. So, we had to go back to the drawing board. We came up with various names including the ones from current teams including ‘Urja’ and ‘Vajra’ before settling on ‘Tejas’, meaning the radiant. The logo too went through various stages of development and color and shape changes before we settled on the present version of the logo. That’s how we went from being called The United XI to Tejas.

One of the first major events we did together as a team was the SCL Mini hackathon. This event indeed put us all into sync. We sat down a day prior listing together our ideas and brainstorming before settling on one idea and then working on it and getting all the prerequisites ready. On the day of the hackathon itself, almost every member from the SDT not only stayed throughout the entire length but also contributed resourcefully to the project. Everyone was working in sync and greatly collaborating with one another. This not only glued the team together but also got everyone close for all future competitions.

This quarter in particular was one of the best for the team, starting at the very bottom of the table and climbing on slowly to win the quarter. It was one of the best moments ever. The entire had worked really hard especially towards the last few days of the quarter, showing a great amount of dedication, passion, and unity towards the team that it was really overwhelming. Even people who weren’t that active towards the beginning started working with great passion. It indeed wouldn’t have been possible without everyone. When the final results came in, everyone was overwhelmed and rejoicing.

 It is always a great feeling to win something that you always wanted to, but when you come right from the bottom and win it with everyone else in your team, it’s a totally different feeling altogether.

Tejas and Sophists has been my driving force for the past 3-4 months. It not only helped me improve myself with academics and co-curricular, but it also imbibed the best practices in me for doing so. May it be Pair sessions, OKRs, SCL, or anything else, I have improved and learnt so much in a span of only a few months that I haven’t been able to in years. From not being able to concentrate even for a few minutes properly, moving to 9-10 hour pair sessions, and finishing an insane amount of work way before schedule, I feel so great that I could achieve this feat due to this workspace. If the pre-October version of me saw the post-October version, he’d be really surprised and proud of me and I feel, that’s the sign of growth in me that the workspace has helped me achieve.