BSc Graduate to a Software Developer in 30 weeks — Soumitha’s Journey at Masai School
Soumitha Bhaskara takes pride in the confidence with which she speaks English today. In college, she could barely manage to speak a few words of English. Having studied in Telugu medium throughout her education, the 21-year-old calls herself an average student.
Born in Chennai, Soumitha grew up in Palamaner, Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh. A passionate dancer since she was a child, Soumitha dreamt of becoming an aeronautical engineer. But she took a keen interest in web development and had the knack for designing websites for a long time.
Thanks to an NGO named ‘Join the Dots Foundation’, Soumitha got to hear about Masai School, on the recommendation of a HackerRank member who was at the NGO. Yet, she did not imagine that she would end up taking a high-paying job in tech at the end of the course.
A bachelor’s graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering, she was keen on becoming a web developer. Soumitha was able to crack through some campus placements soon after her graduation. Despite the offers being decent, Soumitha realised that she just wasn’t skilled enough to start and progress well.
From English-speaking skills to basic technical knowledge, she had a lot of questions around her capabilities to excel at any job. Masai School was her answer.
Taking the Full-Stack Web Development course, the thingsthat she learned as part of the course are HTML, CSS, Javascript, DSA on the MERN stack. Soumitha did realise that it was going to be a hard road ahead, taking coding classes from 9AM to 9PM for 6 days a week. Calling herself a lazy student before Masai happened to her, she now finishes most of her every day tasks within only 50 percent of the time.
“It is all about the approach. Once your approach is developed mentally, it should not take a lot of time to get ahead of your tasks every day. This level of discipline was only possible for me because of Masai School.”
A year ago, she had not imagined that her life would be like this now. However, her very first induction to Masai School was a personal low day. She saw several peers who seemed proficient in English and it intimidated her to an extent that she thought she wasn’t a good fit for the coding school.
But the Masai staff, as she says, have been with her throughout the process, helping her with both technical knowledge and English-language skills.
But beyond technical skills and communication skills, Soumitha’s family recommended that she not move out of the village after her education, owing to some personal constraints and also financial barriers. The college she studied in, did not have basic access to quality campus placements. Getting a high-paying job at a tech company was a dream next to impossible.
However, Soumitha never gave up and went ahead to choose her own career and not compromise. Today, she is overwhelmed with the fact that she is now a local superstar and a figure of admiration and inspiration for the peers in her village. Family members and relatives point at her and ask their own children to ‘Be Like Soumitha’.
Only a month ago, she cracked a software developer job at a Bengaluru-based tech startup, making a salary that she could not think she would ever make.
“No matter how many times I asked them the same question, Masai School made sure I was helped until I learnt what I wanted to. Before Masai, I was not this confident in speaking English. The staff was very keen about how every student performed in evaluations and assignments. It goes to say how different Masai is, compared to the other courses in the market.”
