My weekend experience: computer literacy and career guidance seminar

I think my friends don’t want to be friends with me anymore.
I categorically posted this on my WhatsApp status;

If you’re my friend and I’m on stage and you have your phone in your pocket I don’t know you anymore.

I posted this after I made a delivery on “Introduction to blockchain” at a seminar and realized my friends hadn’t taken not even a single picture of me while I was on the stage speaking.

It’s a big deal to me to get on a stage or podium and deliver. I grew up with a massive stage-fright. I have a very embarrassing history of disgracing myself on stage. In basic school, whenever I was called(or it was my turn) to come in front of the class and speak or deliver in any form, I would end up tearing down. Yes I ended up crying in front of the whole class. How embarrassing! I was just painfully timid and shy and just unconfident.

Today as I write, upon years of intentional learning and challenging myself, speaking on stage is my favorite thing to do. Though I do not get to do it so often, whenever I get the opportunity I am always very excited about it.

To me there is a special feeling when speaking on stage. It’s the best feeling ever. I don’t know the exact words to describe it. It’s so liberating to do especially in my case when it was my biggest fear once. Doing it now, it feels like I have a super power.
Picture how you’ll feel when you overcome your once biggest fear. The feeling is just awesome.

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Yeah very quite unbelievably, that was just an introduction; a brief background. Pardon me, I get excited when I talk about things like this. 😌

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My Weekend Experience

_{seminar flyer}
Last weekend (18th February) the new administration (us 😌) of the computer science society (CSS) of my school organized it’s first program.

Computer Literacy and Career Guidance Seminar

_{Brief
I am the chairman of the judiciary board of the computer science society, where @gunu1 is the president. That is just to say that we are more than involved in this. In fact, the whole thing was our idea and we planned everything together with the other executives of the society.}

The aim of this seminar was to introduce the freshers in the computer science society to opportunities available as a computer science student. While imparting them with enough information and resources to guide their career choices.
We aimed to have each participant(student) in the seminar to know exactly what they want to focus on in the broad field of computer science at the end of the seminar.
We did not get the expected attendance we had anticipated. I know it was because of the poor publicity we gave to the seminar. Also, another contributing factor to the poor attendance is that there was a general assembly sitting ongoing on campus at the exact same time we were also having our seminar only a lecture hall ahead. And since we didn’t start on time, I think most students that came earlier went and sat at the general assembly meeting thinking it was our seminar.

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In fact we had initially planned to have our seminar at the same venue start at the exact same time as the general assembly meeting. It was later on we learned about the general assembly meeting and shifted our seminar to another lecture hall and the time, 30minutes late.

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We had 3 speakers,

1. A Microsoft Student Learn Ambassador,
2. A full stack developer, and
3. The CSS president

The Microsoft Student Learn Ambassador was invited to speak on and introduce the freshers to “Open Source”.
The Full Stack developer talked about his journey and experiences as a developer while being a student and all the perks of being a developer. He tackled the career guidance bit.
The CSS president (@gunu1) delivered on the computer literacy bit.

While the speakers delivered I went round the hall and took details of everyone as our attendance. We had 60 students. These details included the phone numbers. What we intend to do with them is we want to create a WhatsApp group and add them so that we can send them materials on the information we have them at the seminar and also share with them any opportunities we get that we think will be useful to them.

_{screenshot of my presentation from my note}

At the end of the 3 speakers, the refreshments for the attendees had not come yet but it was on the way, I was asked to engage the students while we wait for the refreshments. I told the moderator to introduce my topic as “Building a success mindset”. I quickly opened my note and jot down some key points to talk on.

I was amazed at myself how the seemingly tired students were paying attention to me. I basically gave them an interesting story about some key highlights of my life worth sharing and motivated them to believe in the capabilities.

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You Can Do Anything You Put Your Mind To.
•••••
If others have done it you can do it too, and even better.

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PS: I am still mad at my friends for not taking me pictures while I was giving delivery on the stage.

_{All graphics used in this post were designed by our graphic designer, Caleb(Cals_creations) and all pictures were taken from our phone.}

_Source