Doing my Post Graduation at FOSS United

I didn't join B.Tech to learn computer science but to learn how to communicate with people. Till class 12th, I hardly use to talk to new people because I knew that I might not be able to put my points.

I joined Cochin University for my bachelor's degree in August 2016. Since day zero in my college, I was excited about meeting folks from Kerala due to a couple of reasons, first, I will learn how to communicate, specifically in English, a language that could be very useful to connect folks around the world. I never used English to communicate until I joined college. I became the class representative of the batch for the first year. This role was helping me to learn exactly what I wanted. The second reason for being excited was to explore the southern states of India. After spending four years in Kochi, Kerala feels like my 2nd home.

It has been almost a year since I joined FOSS United. Initially, the role was to work with the rest of the team to organize a hackathon, FOSS Hack 2020. Organizing, volunteering and attending hackathons, college club activities and workshops were most of my thing during college. After the hackathon, Rushabh and Kailash were discussing the idea of tech for non-profit organizations (NPOs) using ERPNext. I felt excited again, working with NPOs was something I always had in mind. It was a match.

The reason I am writing these notes is I wanted to share something about working at FOSS United. Working here feels like I have joined for Post Graduate program after my Bachelor's (although I still have a backlog to clear in B.Tech). I never felt anything like most of my batchmates share about their post-college life (or the corporate job life). It feels like I am still in a college like a few years back, exploring random things, working on whatever I have a love for, but in a more organized manner. Anand is a full-time mentor to me. I can ping him anytime on any doubts I have. Working with the FOSS United team helps me to think in a more organized way. I never thought I would look at GitHub instead of the Play Store to install any app. Discussions at FOSS Meetups, FOSS United Public and Internal group and First Commit session are the places where I spend most of my time and the discourse there helps me think about everything pragmatically. ERPNext is teaching me lots of lessons as well, Finance 101, HR 101 and everything's 101. My goal is to contribute to the codebase of ERPNext one day.

Edit (16/10/2021) : I cleared my last backlog in July 2021.