Positive Reflection -Amal Fellowship
“The unexplored path leads to undiscovered treasures.”
There are certain decisions, you take in your life without the utmost consent of your inner self. Later you realize that those were the most valuable decisions.
Discovering a new path feels scary. It seems to be a mix of a scary and exciting journey ahead. They’re career-focused, life-enhancing, happiness-increasing trails. It’s not always life or death. But it can feel that way.
What feels like the end is often the beginning!
Everything has an end. And so does this beautiful journey of the Amal Fellowship. Going back to memory lane, when this journey started, I had no idea how things will go, in which direction the path will take me, and how farther? As days pass, my fear also grows stronger and stronger that at any time I will be dropped out of the course. I never knew that I will make up to this stage.
“When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s simple.” — Paulo Coelho
I was a fifth-semester student struggling to get an internship, striving in several ways but getting no response in return made her feel that how will she get a job when she can't even get an internship at this initial stage? I used to question myself about this daily, then I came across this fellowship program through social media. I asked my friends to get ourselves enrolled in this but they denied it, as we had a lot of pressure at that time plus online courses too. In the seventh semester, I saw many university fellows doing this fellowship, and seeing them so much motivated, enthusiastic, and positive made me feel sad. There was a pang of guilt within me that I shouldn't have left this opportunity.
As it rightly said, “ Where there’s a will there’s a way”. I applied to this fellowship again in my eight-semester and I am extremely grateful that I availed myself this opportunity.
This is the first experience of my life that I had the opportunity to learn something beyond formal education and that too wonderful. This wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten journey of my life is not so long, but the coverage is vast in terms of experience.
I can see the positive change in myself within these three months. I can see how much I have improved from delaying things and not paying attention to detail to have a strong work commitment and to producing quality content; I came this far.
When I joined the Amal academy and our first session was on March 20, that day was very exciting for me. I was very nervous because for the first time in my life I had to deal with so many people whom I didn’t know and this interaction was through technology. The first day and the second day were very heavy for me because I felt that everyone was more literate and experienced than me while I had no skills. I controlled this fear for a few days. I explained to myself that I would not be able to learn anything like that.
“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow”
Learning is a continuous process and Reflection is the necessary bridge in that learning. Every task, every challenge in our daily routine brings an opportunity to learn & groom our personality.
As an Amal fellow, I found really interesting & exciting activities that involve me to actually learn and experience new things in my life. It will be actually hard for me to extract one instance that had a great impact on my life. For instance, the fellowship helped me to improve my leadership, communication, writing, and teamwork skills.
The instance that had the most impact on me:
This writing activity created a great impact on me. I always hated this writing and descriptive things as I enjoy physical activities more. Apart from that I honestly had a fear that my English skills and vocabulary is weak and I was never confident about this. But I knew that in carrier building, these writing skills play a huge role so for its sake and to stay connected with AMAL I use to complete my tasks and this medium blog activity. Doing these activities I never realized that I am improving day by day. After receiving awesome feedbacks from my PA and PM I started believing in myself that YES I CAN ROCK IN THIS WRITING SKILL TOO.
With time, I realized how essential the Amal values and principles are for shaping the skills that will not helpful for your professional life but in your personal life as well. Without exhibiting these principles, one can’t succeed in life. I loved how the facilitators maintain the decorum in virtual interactions in training you, ensure active listening, appreciating remarks “I Know You Can Do It”, clarifying the queries, fun activities, providing constructive feedback to ensure respectful behavior. Furthermore, transferring these qualities in the fellows so nicely that I can see their equal support, encouragement, sharing opportunities, felicitations, motiving comments, and positive feedback to uplift each other are truly inspiring. It changes my way of seeing things. Now, I look for opportunities from the adversities and remain consistent and positive for whatever is happening has a purpose for sure.
“The smallest spark ignites the fire that lies deep inside you, and suddenly everything is possible”
That was the day when I felt really really stronger :)
This instance proved all my negative thoughts wrong and helped me to bring positivity to my thoughts and behavior. When I look back, I felt I could do things very differently efficiently. But “It’s never too late to start over”
