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Stoa Digest #30: Working Towards Clarity

The end goal, should always be to achieve a goal by attaining knowledge about it.

Jan 10, 2022

✍🏼 From an Alumni’s Editorial Desk ✍🏼

A note from Pallavi Gupta

“These past 24 weeks have been nothing short of a challenge.

They helped push limits I didnt know I had, and even when I did, pushed me in ways I wouldn't do outside of Stoa’s influence. I know for a fact that they will go on to be additions to my life, as completely vibrant stories, for sure.

NGL, when I first joined it was a bit overwhelming to learn new acronyms to find new music, discover fresh and mind-bending YT channels, while even learning about personal finance but it was nevertheless, exciting to hang out with a cool and confident bunch like the community I found myself at with Stoa.

Weekend sessions were the ones I always looked forward to as they acted as an anchor for the latter half of a completely rollercoaster year.

With people who helped broaden my view, the need to have a stronger self identity, emerged.

Being vulnerable was made easier and encouraged which was both rare, along with bringing another layer of depth to all my interactions.

I hope, like me, everyone found a few cheerleaders, buddies or simply got to know themselves better.
Personally, I’ve had a gala time and saw myself transforming into somebody who tries and manages to handle her shit ( still a WIP though).

I’m fully aware it's just a CBC, but it did help me in a way that I am not eloquent enough to express.

Stoa was supposed to be happenstance and a bet I took on MYSELF to make something out of it. The most worthwhile learning out of this decision has been "I need to take more bets on myself".

And I sincerely hope this year everyone reading this receives the strength, courage and confidence to take more bets on themselves.

Ciao!" 👋🏻

📣Announcements 📣

This weekend we onboard our Fifth Cohort!
If you haven't had the chance yet, check out the Chill channels and get talking with them/book up some time to chat!
Give them a warm, Stoan welcome!

🌟 Glow Ups 🌟

Vikrant Mehra worked hand-in-hand with serendipity to find Sairam, be inspired by him, and finally ended up nabbing a job at Accel as a Content Marketer (Yes, he is going to be working with Sairam, that is correct!)

Context: Sairam is one of our facilitators, and writes a very cool newsletter you can find here too.

So, we’re very excited!!

Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂

Shreevardhan Shah & Sriram NG - 10th Jan

Aniruddha Jawanjal - 11th Jan

Chetan Sharma - 13th Jan

Siddish Iragamreddy - 15th Jan

🔦 Fellow Spotlight 🔦

What did you study in college?

“I went a pretty regular route and went to Engineering College, but if there was one thing college taught me, it was that I didnt want to be an Engineer at all. Even from Campus Placements, I ended up getting a job at a rather large company, and within 8 days I was done & dusted with my resignation handed over. I just couldn’t do it.”

What’s your journey been like since then?

In 2015, I quit my day job so-to-speak and followed my father’s footsteps, but also something I grew to be extremely passionate about.
By about 2017, a friend of mine introduced me & spoke to me about Permaculture and told me about Permaculture Design, which I ended up joining a course for at Aranya Agricultural Alternatives and tried my teachings for the first time on a 4 acre farm.
The thing about it is, it’s not a daily returns or monthly harvesting system - which is what, as farmers, we’re very used to.
It’s an extremely long term investment, and you have to commit to doing it consistently and waiting long periods to reap the rewards of it.

What’s something you do not many people know about?

I dont do this to be known in the first place, I do it so more people can reap the benefits of something like Permaculture.
One of the things I do is invite farmers to the farm and provide them a meal, but also try and teach them about Permaculture.
One of the ways I learnt about Permaculture is travelling to multiple different states within India, so I ended up travelling to about 120 villages across the country trying to learn about farming practices in the country.
When you’re connected to the growing season is when you realise how your food grows, and what matters for it to grow.

If you had a choice would you live in a large farmhouse?

Not even remotely!
I dont even believe in civilisations, the last place food forests exist(Which are a necessity of permaculture is in a city). So, I regret largely having developed a permaculture farm in the middle of the city, surrounded by developing/developed areas.
Things like Water Conservation that i’ve ended up devoting my time & resources to has no cap for the end user, so the water table becomes easier to reach for a whole community, but becomes so much harder for me to keep maintained for a whole community.

What is something you can talk about for 10m or more?

“The short answer is Agriculture or Farming. The longer version is I hope that in the next few years, there’s a mass majority of people who have at least tried their hand at farming or tried to grow something of sustenance on their own.
You only realise how valuable nature is to existence when you actually dabble in it, so gardening is the best way to do that.”

You’ll find Apuroop here: On LinkedIn / On Twitter

and Apuroop’s startup Quoti here: LinkedIn

📣 📣Announcements📣 📣

For all you Cohort 5 fellows out there, before you start Orientation over the weekend, Bhavya wanted to get to know more of you. So, Potterheads or not, come by on Wednesday evening for a chit-chat on Discord!
Bring your chai, pets and conversational topics you find interesting!
On Tuesday, Nameet Potnis will be joining us to talk about what what the Web3 holds by way of Tokens & NFTs.
If you’ve been confused about all the places you hear about this - this session will be worth attending!
Rakshit writes some really good twitter threads, and has built himself a twitter brand with it.
If you’ve been looking for a reason to join Twitter, understand how to leverage it and how to build out your personal brand with it - this session is the one for you!

You’ll find updates for both on the #Announcements channel on Discord!

Meetups

🐝Community Buzz 🐝

Last week's fellow-led releases

You can tell what a curious fan of Marvel, Movies and Music Pranav is from his blogs - here’s another gem by him. Give it a read, send him some feedback or appreciation!

What’s Brewing? ☕️

Shonik’s first ever thread was about learning! For someone whose a CBC Mafia gangster, this was rather fitting, I'd say.

Shonik @Shonik14

🧠We've been doing Learning all wrong for a long time🧠 Learning happens as a combination of : 🧵

Crypto >>>> Strategy? But what was the Strategy behind this decision for Saumya?

Saumya Saxena @saxenasaheb

I quit a strategy role at a top firm to get full-time into cryptocurrency. A walk through my decision-making process🧵

How many others are doing #100DaysofNoCode with Bhavya?

Bhavya Suneja @bhavya_suneja

Day 7 of #100DaysOfNoCode 🎉 I've made it through my 1st week in no-code! In that time I've made a journal, personal site, form, a resource directory of neswletters and small automations using @airtable, @softr_io, @TallyForms, @zapier and @mmmdotpage! Some reflections 🧵

Linking-In 🖇

This week on Discord: Best Discord Messages This Week

For Stoans by Stoans ✍🏼📚⏯

Books 📚

Open

Watchtime 🎥

Weekend Binges 🍿🥤

Blogs 🤓

Meme Wars 🥲

This week’s shiny new winner of Best Meme goes to …………

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 Bhavya Acharya

To end, we’ll leave you with this:

It’s a small little token of the music fellows are listening to ranging multiple genre '& styles.

🎧Keep it coming folks 🎧, we’d love to have these for every digest we put out!!

See you next Monday!

Keep reacting, keep sharing, keep posting, keep learning!