My 2022 – Vignesh Reddy Kandi :
1st few months :
This year was one of my favourites. I spent New Year’s Eve with my grandparents In Karimnagar, India. But the later weeks of January turned out to be scary because of the omicron variant, however, I was safe out of it and returned to Helsinki. From February to May, all I had to do was complete my course assignments and projects and pass the course with good grades.
The long-awaited vacation had finally begun. And all of my close friends began flying to their native countries, But I still had a month to travel to India. Then a random May afternoon I got a call from Junction and was told that I got selected as Application processing Team lead, I agreed and finished my onboarding.
June had arrived, and I still hadn’t decided what to do for my birthday, but due to an emergency, I needed to go to India sooner than expected, so I rescheduled my flights(Helsinki to Delhi and Delhi to Hyderabad) for June 5th. Again, I spent two months in India, but this time without the worry of viruses. After returning to Helsinki on February 25th, I realized that I had spent three of the seven months in India.
Kickstart :
But then my actual role at Junction began, and I was enjoying my work. I learned about many things through Junction that I wish I had known earlier, such as Startup Sauna, Aaltoes and its Ecosystem. While continuing in my role, I was given the opportunity to be the Registrations team lead, which I thought was better for me because I had nothing to do during the event. One day in the Startup Sauna, I saw a poster with the large text “Hack in a Hotel” and thought it was interesting, so I looked into it and learned about Dash. Initially, I planned to be a Dash participant, but I ended up volunteering with an amazing program team.
Going towards the end :
Since I enjoyed volunteering in 2021, I applied to Slush as a group lead. Most of my friends who applied had already been contacted, but I hadn’t, so I assumed I’d missed out. However, the night before the deadline, I received a message from my team lead informing me that I had been selected as the Event Badge claim group lead. I told my friends about it and started working on it.
One of my friends suggested that I would be a good fit for Catalyst as a community manager and encouraged me to apply; I did so and was selected. October and November have been extremely hectic. All three events occurred simultaneously, and I wanted to give my all at Junction, so I was in three positions and handling two of the most important tasks And completed them perfectly. During my time at Junction, I had the opportunity to create content for Junction’s Instagram and fly a drone. It was truly amazing,I enjoyed every minute of my time in Dipoli by meeting new people and doing my work.
Slush began in the following week of Junction. I had high hopes for it, but I didn’t enjoy Slush as much as I did the previous year. Despite the drawbacks, I had a good time at the afterparty and met a few amazing people through slush. After all of this, I took a month off in December to do nothing and enjoy the holiday season.I took a step back in my studies but gained a lot of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But, overall, it was a great year in which I dealt with problems in a variety of ways and learned how to overcome them.
