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99 Days: Reflections on my MoT Scholarship by Nithin SS
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99 Days: Reflections on my MoT Scholarship by Nithin SS

Nithin was awarded a Scholarship for a full year's Pro Membership, here is his story of the experience.

 

💡 "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." - Marie Curie on the importance of self-improvement

Source: Pierre Curie: With Autobiographical Notes by Marie Curie

I never knew that the excitement as a kid while receiving a scholarship will still be the same after growing up. Receiving scholarship from MoT has given me such an excitement which made me realise that irrespective of how old you become, the feeling of happiness on receiving something big will always be same!!!

To be frank, MoT was unknown to me until 2018 November. And I was in my comfort zones back then. It was a light-bulb moment for me when i realised that I could no longer go like that and getting out from that comfort zone is really needed to be a better tester.

The new journey started back then, and to see the progress it required a lot of unlearning on what I learned so far*.* I would be really thankful to the moment which made me to do a self reflection and change of thoughts. I started getting involved to the community, talk to other testers(apart from colleagues), and started spending more time on learning & up-skill myself which included MoT Club membership.

The club membership journey for 1+ year journey helped me to discover "what I knew before was just a drop and there is an ocean of unknowns". I started following all the threads in Club and later registered to be part of MoT slack. Trust me, both have enormous amount of information and which is pretty enough to guide you.

Learning further increased my thirst to go deeper for which club membership was not really enough. And I managed to find about MoT Scholarship 💡

I wrote a mail explaining how PRO membership can help me to advance in my career without any expectations 🤞

On the same day I received a response from Diana(Event Boss) mentioning that my application is under review for the time being as the whole world was impacted by uncertain times of COVID-19. I really appreciate her promptness to revert me with the status.

COVID-19 played a villain role in the learning journey!!! And I didn't had much control over that 🙁 

After the announcement of "TestBash Home 2020" I was blessed to see the good news TADAA 🎉. ***My application for Scholarship got accepted*** 🥳  Really!!! I couldn't believe it and read the mail 2-3 times again. And to make it special, I even got a ticket to "TestBash Home 2020" offered by Gem Hill as she was sponsoring a few tickets...

I was in seventh heaven after receiving these two updates 😇  And I didn't really know how to explain the feeling.

And over the 99 Days time, I learned & experienced a lot. My first conference [TestBash Home] was a new benchmark for virtual conferences. Also got a few chances to talk with different mentors to guide and inspire me.

Few things I can highlight is watching the TestBash home & previous TestBash video's on repeat mode and updating notes again as I learn. During that process, I do refer and research a lot on the similar points and prepare my notes and contents. I believe in learning by sharing which inspires me to write articles and blogs for others.

MoT can be referred to 'Encyclopedia on Testing'

Why because it contains all the right resources by the right people for the right people who are keen to learn. And it justifies on why it is called as Ninja training for Testers. For all those who asks me about where to refer for good resources on testing, I would recommend MoT.

The more I explore the more to learn. I got chance to learn new things from Dojo courses along with refreshing knowledge on old skills. A short article won't do justice for what I learned during this 99 days, however I will just highlight a few talks/courses/articles here:

  1. Introduction To Modern Testing - Alan Page
    • It explains about modern testing, thoughts, principles etc
    • How to evolve to achieve quality as whole-team ownership
  2. Optimising Manual Test Scripts For An Agile Environment - Matt Archer
    1. Applying YAGNI principle
    2. Refactoring & Optimising
    3. Explaining the risks associated to test scripts
  3. Introduction To HTTP - Mark Winteringham
    1. Fundamentals on HTTP requests & responses
    2. API tests and demos
  4. Ten Misconceptions About Software Testing - That Non-Testers Share
    1. This is a well written article on the misconceptions on testing
    2. Details each points very well with the truths associated with
  5. Introduction to Java - Mike Talks
    1. Simplest Java course which I ever listened to
    2. Step by step with detailed examples and codes for each concepts
    3. Really helped to refresh my Java Knowledge after a long time working with other languages
  6. The Quality and Testing Information Model: Getting Important Quality-Related Information to the Right People - David Greenlees
    1. A well explained article which explains testing information model and about oracles, heuristics etc
    2. Explaining the model of Seek - Identify - Gather & Report
  7. Learn about TestSphere and TestSphere Challenges
  8. RiskStorming ideas

And one good thing about courses by MoT is, it is not really spoon feeding and complex. Mostly all the courses/articles/talks are explained from personal experiences and well structured to give the right information in right quantity.

Apart from that, I have many options to apply the knowledge gained in my career and all the true learning will lead ourselves to be better!!!

Keep asking questions to yourself on how this impacts/helps you while learning, because change is the end result of true learning. By understanding the change, we get true essence of learning.

Now, with my scholarship I am excited for the 99 minutes workshops and upcoming TestBash events [for which I have a 99 sec talk in plan 🤫 ] and really looking forward for the interactions and learnings which is going to happen in coming days with MoT.

I have a plan to consolidate my learning experiences with MoT in a book/long article by next year(which is still in my mind as an idea), will see how it goes. 😊

💡  "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest" - Benjamin Franklin

Invest more time to learn, push yourself to achieve more. And make use of the sources from you can gain knowledge.

I'm still learning and always learning!!!

Also MoT, forever I will be thankful for this opportunity...

 

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