This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub.
This is the next segment of our blog series highlighting Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone, the highest status level attainable, and have recently graduated from university. Each blog in the series features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassador community, and what they’re up to now.
Today we meet Abir Pal, who is from India and recently graduated from Chandigarh University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
When you joined the Student Ambassador community in 2020, did you have specific goals you wanted to reach, such as developing a particular skill or quality?
1. To get familiar with different verticals in tech and collaborate with the community in building software tools.
2. To connect with different people focused on technology.
3. To grow awareness of how things work in different types of companies via the network I gained.
4. Finally, to give back to the community what I have learned.
5. Apart from these, thinking back, I had a goal of getting connected with Engineers at Microsoft.
As expected, I achieved these goals as I progressed from Alpha to Beta to Gold Ambassador. I could build better connections and learn what other folks are doing. Getting to know people like my fellow ambassador Aditya Oberai and witness his passion for developer relations was quite an insightful experience.
What are the accomplishments that you’re proudest of and why?
With my technical skills brushed up because of newfound community, I could land my first fellowship at Major League Hacking, as well as an engineering internship at Affinidi, Singapore, where I wrote backend, frontend and deployed the secured code to cloud across various environments.
What are you doing now that you’ve graduated?
I have joined as a Junior Software Engineer, and I will be continuing to grow my career in JavaScript and as well as iOS development.
If you could redo your time as a Student Ambassador, is there anything you would have done differently?
I achieved most of the things that I planned for, but certain things, like giving a talk at Microsoft Reactor for JavaScript tooling, remain a wish. Perhaps later on in my career, I can fulfill it. I remain open to such amazing speaking opportunities.
If you were to describe the community to a student who is interested in joining, what would you say to convince them to join?
Most of the students I interact with are majoring in computer science. Really, the best things are the Cloud Credits, the variety of experiments one can do with Azure, and sharing your work with the community. This is what most attracts them to the program.
What advice would you give to new Student Ambassadors?
To those who see themselves as software engineers in the future, I say keep exploring, and then focus on one of your interests to master it really well.
Do you have a motto in life, a guiding principle that drives you?
Believing in yourself and getting to a deep level of self-awareness is what drives me the most.
What is one random fact few people know about you?
I love playing keyboard and have performed a song for my fellow ambassador Aditya Oberai during his birthday in the year 2020.
Good luck to you in all your endeavors, Abir!