Stoa Digest #48: 🤔 Big dreams
Are achieved in small but incremental improvements.
It’s been a while since we Spotlit one of our fellows, so we’ll go back into our archives and unearth a conversation we had with Prithvi Shanbhag of Cohort 3.
🔦 Fellow Spotlight 🔦
If you haven’t chanced upon these reels yet, know that some of our favourite reels about members of the community were made by the human in this week’s Spotlight.
Prithvi was a quiet lurker from the Third Cohort, but we knew very quickly that he was going to deliver fomo from being a fellow of the community very quick.
How, you ask? Well, the proof is in this pudding, right here.
What’s your story with photo/videography been?
“Well, I started simply with a smartphone that had a good camera.I used to enjoy looking up new tech and just finding out about the best gadgets and things. This was initially an HTC phone, which was a big deal back then.
Even Instagram & social media was a new thing, so if you scroll back, you’ll even find like some pretty random photos I took. I’d sit around and explore all I could about the camera, and all it’s modes, and just take a lot of photos.
That’s kind of when I started enjoying it, and watched some youtube videos and stuff too.Initially, I wanted to dive deeper into Adobe tools obviously, but it was unsupported on the laptop I had then, and it was also pretty expensive.
Personally, I always looked at Photography like it was a hobby only, so even now I have so much content, but I just dont post it, because I have to sit & edit it and make something out of it.
Some of these things, I dont even know what i’m missing from the content I have, but I know I’m missing something, so it’s just on hold.”
What about photography did you find most fun?
“I dont know what it was that started this, but everytime I’d shoot something, or take videos of it, it would always make me think of “what movie scene is this familiar to”, or, “what story can I tell with this shot?”
And that’s where i’d have the most fun, making stories out of nothing, and coming up with how the story gets told, that was very fun to me.
Because I’d go find out how someone told a story through a literal particular lens, and that’s what would motivate me and get me excited, so I’d try and replicate how someone had done something that I really enjoyed as content.
It made me care less for the validation of it, and more for just creating stories I was a fan of.”
Given you really enjoyed an ‘Arts’ hobby, howcome you still did Engineering after?
“In school, I was always good at the science subjects, this is around 9-10th standard. I was really good at them, and I also enjoyed studying them a lot.
So, to me, I thought, “awesome, let’s study science.” Little did I know.
Funnily enough, my parents wanted me to study Commerce, but because I enjoyed Science, I ended up taking that only.When 11th standard came around, I didnt know what I was preparing myself for only, but my only redemption was that I had chosen Computer Science, because I started struggling in all the subjects that I did actually enjoy before in 10th standard.
Computer Science stuck by me through it all though, remained fun & I remained good at it as well, so it really was one of my favourite subjects.”
How did you conclude you were good at Computer Science?
“Really early on, like around 5th or 6th standard, we had a computer at home.
Back then also, computers were a very new thing, but like I really enjoyed just fiddling around on them.So, intuitively I’d find these cool things to do on them, and I’d go find more ways to do a certain task or activity on them. That’s kind of how I got good at it, because I would automatically just gravitate towards wanting to toy with what was going on.
Logical Thinking was always very strong for me, so it was super fun to be able to use that and build things out of it back then.“
What’s something Stoans are unlikely to know about you?
“I love discovering new places, so I’d always explore Maps and things.
Especially, for eg. if people are talking about a particular place or an experience, then i’ll ask them where it is, and I’ll go and find out more about it.But my sense of direction is pretty great as well, so I would really enjoy like understanding a city through it’s Maps and just try and find my way around it.”
What did you enjoy most about Stoa?
“When I came in, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do an MBA or not, but I also didnt want to commit that large a sum to something like that, so I found Raj’s tweet one day and thought to myself, “why not try Stoa?”.
Stoa taught me a lot in terms of telling me what I didnt know, but it also sparked that same curiosity I used to have with cameras & computers, and made me want to understand more and make the most of this Community.
It was completely different from what I’d experienced in college, because it was a lot of similar-minded people solving fun problems here.
While in college you've kind of really got to find your crew/group/people, whatever you want to call it, here on the other hand, the whole cohort itself was this very well-matched cohort of individuals that pushed each other to do better, even if subconsciously.
Something I definitely learnt from my discomfort at Stoa was networking with people, because I wanted to do so much of it, but I never knew how.
Then what I realised I could do is - I would start talking to all the people I was meeting at the Meetups, so that’s what made it a little easier for me.“
You’ll find Prithvi here on Socials:
LinkedIn, Twitter
📆 Upcoming Events 📆
Only one Zoom event this week!
This Thursday, 19th May
We host a Fireside Chat with the Founders of Ultrahuman - Mohit Kumar & Vatsal Singhal will be joining us to talk about their entrepreneurial journey to change the face of the health tech & fitness space!!
On Friday, 20th May -
We host Pranav & Varsha from Cohort 5 who will be walking us through their version of the history of the Beatles, and we promise it’ll be a goodie.
After all, it is the Beatles.
We’ll see you on the radio at 9PM.
P.S. : The Recording sign in the first poster signifies the session will be recorded.
🥳 🎂Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂
Happy Birthday to Niranjan Kumar Raghupathi and Saurav Sharma!
17th May - Amit Chhabra, Mustafa Lokhandwala, Purvi Soni, Tanzeel Ur Rehman, Simran Bandukwalla
18th May - Mirnalini Venkatraman
19th May - Sanjana Laddha, Aashish Ajmera
21st May - Nitish Deepak, Anoli Shah, Harit Rathi
22nd May - Pratik Dharangaonkar, Vishesh Hakani, Srishti Agarwal
🥲 Meme Wars 🥲
We complained about our memelords missing last week, so the #memes channel took it personally.
But there is only one who will take crowning glory this week!
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
Jagadeash S - struggling to keep up with all the Stoa Prompts.
This is all the music that fellows from our community shared this week.
Enjoy! 🥂