Stoa Digest #42: If you're new to Stoa,
Here are a couple tips & tricks for you
For the next few weeks we’re going to have Alum Takeovers of the Digest. We begin with a takeover by Sneha Prajapati of Cohort 4, the most recently graduated batch!
Hello doston,
Writing this editorial gives me mixed emotions.
On one hand I feel like “ye to kal hi ki bat hai jab maine stoa join kiya tha”(this is but only yesterday’s memories, when i joined Stoa) and on the other I look at my current situation & can see how far (it's literally 1800km far from Home 😂 ) I’ve come in the last 6 months“.
It tells me how much I’ve grown and transformed my life in the last 6 months.
I joined Stoa because I hated college, and just wanted to be at a place where I could learn real-world skills, learn about businesses & building them, and make great connections along the way while doing so.
Having been born & raised in Varanasi, I couldn't resist the urge to go to Bangalore- the Silicon Valley of India, startup enthu as I was.
While the FOMO created by fellow stoans living in these big cities Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi was quite a lot to handle, Bangalore remained first in my list of dream destinations to live in.
I’ve been dreaming of this moment for the last year, and it finally culminated at the Dosa Party meeting Raj, Aditya, Ashwin Goyal and Suhas Motwani among at least 200 others, in Bangalore last month.
Welcome to Stoa, Cohort 6, though I haven’t got a chance to meet anyone, i’m sure quite a few of you joined because of the Stoa FOMO.
Let me be honest & tell you the Twitter noise created by Stoans is legit and 100% authentic, Stoa didn’t paid us to post those tweets and threads. 😂
You might be confused about what’s going to happen at Stoa post-Orientation, which is why I’ll also plug my #100daysofStoa thread here - which might make it easier for you to understand what’s going to happen over the next 6 months for you post-Orientation!
📝 Tips from a Stoa Grad 📝
Firstly, Congratulations 🎊 for making it to Stoa. Before you get started on this roller coaster journey with stoa. Here are a few things which I want you to focus on some more, to make the most out of your 6 month journey at Stoa -
Notion- If you are new to notion, get used to it in the first few days and maintain a learning directory of every week. It will make your life easier and now that assignments are compulsory for C5 and C6 (thank god we were saved 😂) - it will make sure you are on the right track with all your lessons.
You can use this to write and organise your notes, assignments and takeaways from every Live session (Keep an eye for wisdom nuggets by Dhruv in the zoom chat sections, he is an OG facilitator of live lectures). Here’s a glimpse at what mine looks like:
Coaching Sessions -
It is one of the things which I love most about Stoa. Its hard to find a learning space where your teachers care for your mindspace, as much as for your career health. After being so disappointed with my online college experience, I gave my mental models about life, more attention and used lessons from my conversations with my coaches to inform them better.
At Stoa you will find people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, but the one thing which is common to all is that, no one has it all figured out.
We all are here to get clarity around our goals, career, life choices and coaching sessions are designed to help you get that clarity of thought so that you choose the right career, job opportunity or anything else.Put in some real effort to make coaching sessions work for you. Don’t go into coaching sessions expecting magic. Coaching sessions will act like a mirror, so you will get whatever you are looking for in them.
Trust me you will find your own personal Dr. Jahangir but for that to happen, you need to become the Alia Bhatt loving these sessions and putting in the effort to make the best of every session.My coach was Saurabh sir, a very patient and well articulated person and I didnt want to waste any of my sessions with him, just figuring out the problem. So I made it a ritual to mail all my reflections related to that problem which I want to get clarity about, 1 day before every session.
Here’s what my mails to him looked like -
You might have heard it from Aditya or somewhere on our Discord, but internalize this quote to make the best out of Stoa -
“Get out of your comfort zone”
by this I mean, don’t be afraid to reach out to people for 1-1 networking calls, to ask questions during weekend sessions.
Be vulnerable and ask for help.
Give people a reason to talk to you, either help them or give someone an opportunity to help you. At Stoa people are really great when it comes to helping their fellow Stoans, keep this spirit of helping out each other, alive among your cohort.
Networking -
Ask Shelton and Nicaia about how silly I used to be at networking 6 months back 😂, they have witnessed it all.
After a month at Stoa, I set up 1-1 calls with some of the active people on Stoa’s server.
For me, the only motivation to talk to people was to learn and know of a new perspective of life. I loved the diversity of this community, it never stopped amazing me. This community is a gem, you can find people from almost all parts of India and build connections across various startups and communities.
Here’s a collage of my 1-1 networking calls in first month of Stoa (I made it a ritual to take SS with every 1-1 stoa call to keep a token of memory of how we met)
If you want tips on reaching out to people - here are mine:
Go through their introduction and find a common interest point ( PS- you guys are lucky to get your intro’s done in discord, for us C4 it was done formally on circle)
Go through some channels of your interest and see who is actively interacting in those channels, and build a conversation from there onwards.
Appreciate people for what they are doing.
Share on discord.
Or simply can just be human to talk about your fear and discomfort of reaching out to them, because most of the time the other person faces the same sort of fear, but gives up the battle. And inherently, deep down we all want to connect with each other.
Stoa is like a plant, you get what you give to this community.
The more you nurture it, the better the yield.
If you are curious enough to learn about product, marketing, strategy, web3 you will eventually become the best at it.
In C4 many of us were looking for life long friends and found them.
We’ve had a lot of successful stories from within our cohort.
Mohit wanted to get into web3 and, built his skills and proof of work in the web3 domain & got a job with Tezos.
I always wanted to work in a Founder’s Office role at an EdTech startup and I found my dream role with Invact alongside Tanay Pratap.
But, I repeat, don’t treat Stoa like a magic pill, because the real magic can only be created by
you.
Don’t just relax and chill if you want something tangible at the end of your stoa journey. Follow all the prompts, make your own notes, google those unknown terms and make the Internet and curiosity your best friend.
If you’re looking for a job, follow all the sessions and guidelines shared in Career Wednesday by Manoj, Priyal and Surabhi. And trust me Priyal is best when it comes to resume review, so stick with her feedback and comments even if it takes 3-4 rounds (mine took 9 iterations before approval).
And don’t shy away from giving back to this community be in in form or mentorship, resources, articles, your music playlist, job referrals or just by making threads to keep our discord server sane 😂, Nicaia will be happy).
You’ll find Sneha on Socials here
LinkedIn 🖇 / Twitter 🐦
Announcements
This Tuesday we host an event with Divyansh Goel from WintWealth who’ll be talking to us about his background in Engineering & building a FinTech product.
On Thursday we host a critically acclaimed Personal Branding workshop with Raj that is open to the community.
How to attend: DO Register on the announcement, to receive details on how to join the session.We’ve launched the LBTL(Looking Beyond The Lyrics) session a couple months ago - but we’ve moved these to be fortnightly events now.
So next Friday we’ll have an LBTL, not this Friday.
If you’re wondering what an LBTL session is, we’re going to recycle our launch announcement of LBTL from Stoa Digest #35 here -“We’re launching a new Discord event this coming Friday.
Our first ever: ”Looking Beyond the Lyrics” Radio Show.
We’ll start off small, and be hosting these every alternate Friday night, and our hosts will introduce you to some of their favourite music, while also telling you the stories behind what made the songs what they were.
Join us every alternate Friday from 9-10pm on the “Stoa Radio” under 🏛 C O R R I D O R S 🏛 on Discord!
Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂
5th April - Medha Shamanth, Vyom Karia
6th April - Gayathri Sankar
7th April - Udayan Morarka
8th April - Harini Dhanasekar, Apuroop Arja
9th April - Yash Shah, Navendu Jha, Sonakshi Deb Roy, Rhugwed Hudlikar
🐝 Community Buzz 🐝
Meetups
Note: If you’re uploading photos on the Meetups channel, and would love to see your photos in the Digest, as would we - do tag all those in the photos you take, in order from left to right.
It makes Nicaia’s job IMMENSELY easier.
Meme Wars 🥲
This week’s shiny new winner of Best Meme goes to …………
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
Anshul Farkya - a new entrant!!
Congratulations on being the only one that shared a meme that was relevant to the community & handmade, Anshul!!
Sidenote - if you’re gunning for this awkward, make the meme,
don’t repurpose it. 💀🙈
