Student Stories Finalists

Take a look at our finalists for the Student Stories challenge and vote for your favorites!
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@Gio

Meet Georgina from Buenos Aires, Argentina 🇦🇷

“After trying so hard to enter the IT world, I finally got a chance this year. I can't believe I am in a trainee/Jr position at 30 years old. This has been such an amazing trip for me and I've been learning about technologies I haven't worked with before. One of these is Cloud Computing. I have previous knowledge of Telecommunications and already worked with invoicing cloud consumptions but I never had the opportunity to understand that world. So, as part of my training, I want to be able to handle more than one cloud environment and I found this scholarship a great opportunity to get to know more students in this field.

I previously participated and finished a Nanodegree some years ago. I was missing that experience so much that I applied because as a new woman in this field, getting to know the community is not an easy thing to do. Also, I am interested in Nutanix because I am very interested in Hybrid Cloud. I study Telecommunications and Informatics so this is one of the skills I want to develop for my future in the IT world. Also I see the potential that developing this type of knowledge has for my future. On the other side, Nanodegree is terribly expensive for us in my country. We are in lockdown, things are going to change soon for the worst here, and I'm not being pessimist but realist. However, my vision is about taking all the chances to make my career grow: I am studying to be an entrepreneur and give other students real job practice opportunities so they can put into practice their knowledge while helping little business here in my city.

What I found very challenging is to understand the way that Nutanix uses to organize their net. I also study Azure at the same time, and as an Innovator student, I need more than one point of view to gain insights for other things. So this cloud hybrid world is totally a challenge. Also because I think technology is complicated yet very interesting.”

Meet Rahul from Bangalore, Karnataka, India 🇮🇳

I have been a Udacity user for a long time now, about 4 years. I started when I was in college and I was searching for online courses on Machine Learning as I wanted to stand out in my college major project. I like the fact that Udacity courses talk about the business aspect of things, like they would really be inside an organization, and this is a major factor when it comes to learning something new online. For example, learning all the ML algorithms is one thing, but to know which one to use for which problem, assess the costs that it would incur to the organization and try to judge the optimal solution not just based on the prediction score but also if it is practically possible to execute that algorithm with the resources that a business has; these make you industry-ready.

The Nutanix Cloud Scholarship is the first one that I applied to, the reason being, industry’s shift towards cloud. I have been working with Azure for 2 years now and ever since Amazon launched AWS a decade back the rate at which companies are adopting to the cloud is exponential. But at the same time there were some things about these cloud offerings that bothered me. Like, how do companies just trust their data with someone else? What if something goes wrong in the server situated in North America if I am working from India? How long will the resolution time be? I researched about all this and found that the cloud I had been using was one part of the big picture, public cloud. There was also a concept of a private cloud where these issues had already been addressed. At this stage when the scholarship was launched, I thought this is the best of both worlds. A hybrid cloud will solve all the problems from both the offerings that I had seen. Also, Nutanix was a company that I had been following for some time, ever since they had setup a campus next to my office in Bangalore. All of this came together, and I thought this scholarship could teach me a lot of things and fill in the gaps I have had in my mind.

It is early to say if the foundational course has already brought a change to my professional life. But something I really related to, was Cloud Migration. I had recently gone through a complete cloud migration lifecycle at my organization and seen all the issues that the instructor talked about, that could have potentially led to failure in migrating. This motivated me to write an article about how cloud migrations fail most of the time and what can be done to improve them. Professionally, this has been a learning for me, that I am sure the next time I am in between a migration process I will be able to take the lead and make sure it succeeds. On a personal level, the challenge has taught me a lot of concepts about Hybrid Cloud infrastructure, that will help me in the future. But apart from that another important learning has been time management. Working for about 9-10 hours and giving 2 hours to this course meant I had to be more productive than ever. With a few weeks gone by, I believe I have mastered the art of time management. Now, I can complete all daily chores, work and give adequate time to study, learn and write articles about Hybrid Cloud as well. It’s like sometimes I feel to have unlocked the ability to use 2% extra from the brain’s computing power.

The journey has been great so far, both with Udacity in general and with this foundational course. The learning community at slack and LinkedIn is beyond amazing, the type of content shared, and group learning is phenomenal. I will be cherishing this experience forever.

@Rahulraj Singh

@Abhinav Thakare

Meet Abhinav Thakare from Pune, Maharashtra, India 🇮🇳

"It's said that "Life plays its part".

The part of life was going good. I was about to reach an epitome with things just a few steps away but suddenly the cards changed. I was on the rock bottom with a series of complications in life. I had lost a Big internship opportunity at one of the top MNC due to COVID , I prepared for India's Largest Hackathon but was unable to do well and many more things. The wind was not seeming in my direction but I had to find new opportunities to overcome my past.

I was starting to develop interest in Cloud Computing. One of my close friends suggested to me the "Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Program". I applied for the program and got selected. I am glad to say that I am learning Hybrid Cloud from a different perspective.

I thank Udacity and Nutanix for this amazing opportunity."

Meet Jorge Luis Rodríguez González from Mérida, Mérida, Venezuela 🇻🇪

“I was made aware of Udacity thanks to a friend at college that told me about the platform for a course of 3D Graphics Development that was being given for free on the platform.

In my country the current economical and political situation has led to the departure of some of our best and most prominent professionals alongside some of our best teachers. In the university that I attend, in which I've been working very hard to obtain my degree for the last 5 years, most of our Computing departments have either quit or taken leave, which left us with only 10 out of the 20-30 teachers that used to work in the department. This, combined with the obsolescence of our curriculum, have led to a significant lack of the knowledge of the latest and most prominent technologies used today in the industry.

I saw the Udacity scholarship as a way to finally, after so many years of hard work, self-study and practice, get proper, certifiable and formal education, which I hope would help me to move onwards on my career and gain access to a better life for me and my family.

The scholarship challenge has helped me gain a better understanding of how some technologies I've used at work for the last two years run under the hood, and the Nutanix model has helped me find more efficient ways to interconnect them."

@Jorge Luis Rodríguez González

@E.O.

Meet Dawn from Austin, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

“Several years ago, I was involved in the largest wild fire this area had ever seen. Thousands of peoples every possession and home were burned to a pile of ashes. My entire life was less than an SUV sized ash pile, once burned. But I didn't lose my life. Starting over with nothing but the clothing on your back, when so many others have the exact same needs, isn't a simple task--but an important one. Needless to say I was overjoyed when I found a place to live, in exchange for some volunteer work. Just what I needed, at the time. Now, I'm still recovering--and more or less--once COVID came along, I see I will likely never have the exact same "lifestyle" back I had before the fire destroyed so much--but find it a gift to have life and am making a difference by learning skills which can improve my skill set and employability, if not help me to create my own business. I originally applied for a scholarship simply because Udacity emailed me to ask me to do so. I agreed and applied.

To my surprise, I was accepted. It was such a wonderful and amazing experience. I started out, very negative towards slack (without even realizing it) and by the time the challenge ended, I was so into the wonderful exchange of useful resources, help and encouragement of others, I am currently in more than 12 slack workgroups all focused on different areas of tech, code, and other areas of life (including one for exchanging workout tips and recipes with people on a similar healthy lifestyle). It was a no brainer when Udacity once again sent out an email asking me to apply for this Scholarship. I didn't know anything about cloud computing and I find it easier to learn in this format and I am extremely enjoying what I've been learning here. Since I do have the AI interest, as well, I am also seeing a blend of where different things could work together to produce better results. I'm really happy, too, to be included again with such a vibrant community of SLACK scholars all interacting and sharing. I have several life-long friendships forming from the last slack challenge--I'm certain this will continue with this group as well. These scholars are FABULOUS people and it is so great to interact with them, as well as be learning all of these great things, too, and the Udacity crew makes it great too.

I'm having to do a bit more serious time management being in 3 challenges/scholarships at once. However, with COVID, I think that helps me, personally to mitigate the stress of being asked not to leave your home spaces for months on end. Yet it is for a good reason. Local hospitals would otherwise be overwhlemed. However, this particular course of study is immediately applicable to my volunteerism (which keeps a roof over my head). Where I am volunteering, their is great need for some of the very DX we are discussing in this course. I can already see how I can improve things and save. Since I'm volunteering for a non-profit in the middle of COVID, that's no small thing. I cannot wait to implement what I'm learning, if given the chance. I'm also interested in learning, what, if any, intersection there will be between ML, AI and the cloud we are learning about. I think it really rounds out my knowledge, combined with my business knowledge (prior life experiences) to really make a job-marketable skill, even in the midst of COVID shutting everything down. I also enjoy the interaction this is bringing me. I really enjoy the professional connection with other professionals.

Meet Robin from Lafayette, LA USA 🇺🇸

"Here is my personal story and strong heart attachment with my beloved Udacity and Nutanix:

My passion to learn about the latest and emerging technologies brought my feet, hands, heart and mind to Udacity. Actually, I am very happy and proud to share to the world my life story ever since my youthful impossible dreams from my homeland until I step at the gate and was eventually allowed by Udacity to enter, survive, complete previous Nanodegree scholarships and realize that dreams and wishes definitely come true.

I decided to apply for this scholarship because I have a strong intent to be a part of Nutanix's great mission to innovate beyond hybrid clouds for customer needs. I was also highly impressed by the fact that the inspiration which they provide encourage people like me to be hybrid engineers as well in various filed from systems hyperconvergence, to virtual networking and security beyond clouds. I also wish to work for my dream company Nutanix some day to exhibit my skills on hybrid cloud and excel beyond for the rest of my life.

This scholarship challenge just made me young again. I felt like showered with a fountain of youth through the latest technology and trend scattered among us diverse mixture of scholars with varying ages, location and time. Most of all, the learnings which I gained right of the start in phase-1 made me capable and highly confident to begin applying and get a job anew to companies who support clouds, managed services, data center, infrastructures and many more plus the in-demand job requirements for remote work force during this times of pandemic. If I get hired to support cloud services remotely, it will allow me to help people and companies during this time of needs in my own little ways. What more if I succeed gaining the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree Program which I really hope together with all of my deserving classmates. That will be like a punctuation mark for me at this point of my career where respect, dignity and integrity is of high value deep in my humanity. In short, Nutanix and Udacity just made me visible anew in the map of the world. "

@ironBot

@David Lyana

Meet David from Guayaquil, Guayas, Ecuador🇪🇨

"The city I live in was one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. The difficult situation we face, with people dying in the streets, entire families disappeared by the pandemic and images of corpses in the streets due to the impossibility of giving them a Christian burial due to how saturated our health system was, generated a lot of panic, anxiety and stress among us. It was a hard impact for the Guayaquil residents. For this reason, I looked for a way to better cope with this situation: suddenly I found myself doing a mindfulness course and several programming courses that I found among the varied offer that the different educational platforms were correctly offering in these times of pandemic.

Having passed the coding courses I had signed up for and seeing that it was a good way to keep my mind busy while strengthening my knowledge and skills, I set out to search for new educational opportunities. It was there that I came across the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Scholarship. Applying to this scholarship was a challenge for me, but as I was feeling quite motivated, I decided to apply. Thank God I was selected to be part of this important experience.

It is incredible how human beings find ways to get something positive out of so much tragedy.

Most of all, it has allowed me to strengthen my self-esteem and self-perception. I am the father of six children. Due to the pandemic, I have lost my job and I do not have a university degree. However, this scholarship has allowed me to convince myself that I can give more. That I can overcome challenges and that there are opportunities that can be taken advantage of by people like me, who had no prior access to formal education.

By losing my job, I also lost my access to the internet. But I looked for a way to finish the course. I believe this scholarship means a unique opportunity for those of us who are looking for a new beginning.

I always liked technology, unfortunately I had not dared to overcome the difficulties to access higher education. This challenge has motivated me to continue strengthening my skills in programming and cloud computing."

Meet Christine Miyachi from Cambridge, MA, USA 🇺🇸

"I am a lifelong learner and a few years ago when MOOCs started, I began learning online. Udacity came on my radar and I looked at their high quality courses and always wanted to take one but with kids in college, I couldn't afford to spend on myself. When a scholarship opportunity came up on Privacy in the Cloud, I jumped at the chance.

However, when I joined the slack channel the first week, I became overwhelmed. In addition, it looked like people were completing the course with in a week or two. I lost confidence and thought that I could not complete the course. So I dropped out, a decision I regretted later.

When another scholarship became available in AI Foundations, I applied and thought if I get in, I will be determined to complete it. I was accepted and I completed the course. In addition I became a student leader for the #women_who_code channel and did a showcase project described here: https://github.com/Aya-ZIbra/MyYogini and you can watch the app in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru79CoV0dy4&feature=emb_logo . In addition, I won an award for my service in student leadership from my peers.

I just completed Phase 2, which I was given a scholarship to and I now have a certificate of completion on my LinkedIn profile.

I've been in the industry for 30+ years and skills with cloud computing are something that is asked for by potential employers. I also really miss working with a large group of students. The energy of all those people scared me away at first, and now I get so much motivation from the group. If I had an issue, I could get it answered within hours from fellow students. If I needed motivation, it was easy to find. There is so much intelligence on the slack channels, it is infectious!

I found most of the people I meet in the course are engineers just starting out. But even as a seasoned professional, employers want to see that you are working on cutting edge projects. In addition, most people I talk to love hearing about the AI apps I've worked on, so putting GIFs of the output videos in my GitHub repositories is a plus. I would like to transition into doing work with AI and Cloud Computing is a foundation for this work. I know from the projects we do I will be able to showcase my skills and understanding in this area."

@Chris M

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