From the Editorial Room
Prosperity, Wealth and Happiness - Three of the most synonymous words with Diwali. It's increasingly hard to associate anything but the ‘Festival of Lights’ to these three words. Most aspects of the celebration of the festival are hinged on expressing intent and aspiration to one of the three, if not all.
With the win of Good over Evil, I hope we all learnt the value in determination.
In a world where competition pulls every one of us in all possible directions, it takes one individual with immense grace and persistence to not only stick by their own goals, but also be willing to swim upstream, against the current to change something.
At Stoa, we're constantly in an upstream battle. You're consistently bombarded with new information, and more than anything, compelled to allow yourself to be incorrect and accept your lacks in knowledge. This however trains you in the ability of learning, and also listening.
If you think back over the last week, you'll notice that maybe you were stressed about something at work, or even outside of it, but the moment you were around family & friends at a Diwali celebration, it was hard to stress anymore.
It's very, very easy to amplify the negative, and most things around us are targeted towards noticing them, but recognising good things happening in your life will always trump all the negatives.
So when you find yourself going through something rough, remember the happiest memory you have from the last week, and make it your happy place. Go back to it to take a break and escape to it every time you feel stressed out.
Attempt to carry your own prosperity, wealth and happiness, instead of looking for it outside of yourself.
Let's Rewind: Last Week at Stoa
Last week we organised one of our first ever Diwali celebrations and got to indulge in a night of games and fun.
Apparently each breakout room, was it's own kind of special, and if we could tell you everything that went on in each room, we'd have to change the newsletter into a special edition of just recaps & guest edits of each recount.
Also Yash & Ujwal specifically asked that their room be incapable of being recorded, because there was some ✨ content ✨ shared in it. If you want to know more, you'll have to ask them.
But we did have a few winners in two of the rooms.
For Dumb Charades we had: Sahil Singh, Ipshita, Mohit, Goutam, Kanika in the winning team. and for Tambola we had: Piyush & Sujeet claiming the middle & last lines respectively and Rahul who got the Full House'd ticket.
We also asked all of you to come dressed up in your best, and Kritika Singh really delivered, and ended up winning our 'Best Dressed Award' by a landslide.
Here's all of you looking beautiful on the night!
As for what happened on last week's learning weekend?
Well, there was no learning weekend, but we’re back to the grind this week!
Meetups
Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂
9th - Monica Vemula
10th - Kritika Jain
13th - Anshul Kumar
Community Buzz
A lot of Cohort 4 fellows are likely to get in touch with the rest of you to understand more of your working life. Please feel free to be as real as possible, it will help provide them clarity on their interests & if they are headed down the path of right decisions.
From The Enterpreneurship Club - “Zero to One”:
“Our first event at Eclub was conducted yesterday.
Goutam Naik, an ed tech/tech entrepreneur, was invited to pitch in and get feedback on what to focus on, going forward with his venture.
We had around 8-10 participants with spectacular questions and he helped each of us build clarity on the industry, the motive of his startup and pathway for him to go forward. We focused on:
- Building a user interactive LMS.
- Credibility for live projects and hypothetical projects when it comes to proof of work.
- User retention/course completion.
- Target market and,
- How to get mentors to facilitate his projects so that the quality and authenticity of the same is of the expected standard.
These were a few key pointers discussed in detail. Overall we had a very nice session going for about 1hr 45 mins.”
Through the Tuesdays of November 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th, Bharat Babbar will be joining us to run a series of workshops on Communitcation skills. I assure you this is not a series of workshops you're going to want to miss.
We start this Tuesday, so see you tomorrow!
Fellows Rocket🚀🚢 Shipping Content
Tweeple 🐦
Instagram 📸
For Stoans by Stoans
Books 📚
• Sameer Mohan’s book reccos are some of the best to exist out there
Watchtime 🎥
Weekend Binges 🎬🍿
Blogs 🤓
Meme Wars 🥲
This week’s shiny new winner of Best Meme goes to …………
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
Achyut Todi.
Whose Diwali wish is truly one that applies all year round!
“Wish You a Jug-Mug Diwali”