Diving into Algorithms with ScholarX
Three months ago, I have taken a life-changing decision, it was applying for ScholarX.
What is ScholarX?
“ScholarX is an exclusive 6-month program aimed at providing mentoring support to a selected pool of high Potential undergraduate students based in Sri Lanka ideally by a Sri Lankan expat currently engaged with one of the world’s top universities or Fortune 500 companies. It’s our free premium mentoring platform by Sri Lankans for Sri Lankans working towards creating a culture of knowledge and expertise sharing without the limitation of geographical borders.”
[source: https://sefglobal.org/scholarx]
When I got to know about the program, I thought to apply for it because it might be a great opportunity to improve my career path. The application period was in May 2020. SEF (Sustainable Education Foundation) announces the selected students on the 25th of April. I was thrilled when I receive the email from SEF that I was selected as a mentee. My mentor is Chethiya Abeysingha and he is a Software Engineer at Google. I had so many questions to ask from him!
We had our first session in the first week of May. There were 7 students selected for my mentor along with me. We got to know each other in the first session and came up with the idea to train us for coding interviews for the top software companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
Then we planned to have weekly meetings every Saturday. So, we got to communicate closely with him which opened the doors to learn many things from him; especially the experiences during his journey towards getting into Google.
When it comes to coding interviews, algorithms play a major role. We had the Algorithms as a module in my second year, with a lot of unstructured theories that led us to feel this was a boring thing to study. Also, the lecturer played a major role in making this more boring. So I assumed it’s something hard and boring to learn. A year later, everything changed with an interesting book named Grokking Algorithms
It is an excellent book on algorithms that managed to make algorithms interesting subject to me. The book is well written, takes you patiently through the required steps, and includes some appealing pictures and diagrams. It’s excellent for getting your feet wet in the world of algorithms and data structures and can use as a starter book before delving into more advanced and books such as CLRS.
Meanwhile, we had a conversation with the SEF team to build a platform for upcoming ScholarX programs. We came up with a set of requirements to initiate the project. Check it here:
I’m so thankful to the SEF for giving me this wonderful opportunity! Looking forward to the upcoming sessions with my mentor to prepare me more!
