I took a career break to look after my son. Internships enabled me to be a mother and a professional simultaneously.
About the Author: Ruchita Jain is a homemaker who left her job after becoming a mother. She shares how an internship helped her regain her lost confidence and restart her career.
Walking down the memory lane, I remember being placed as a software application developer in a reputed organisation after engineering. I had a handsome salary and had met my soulmate, so the next obvious step was marriage. After two years of the marriage, my son was born. To fulfill my duties as a mother, I decided to quit my job and stay at home. I was happy that I could give more time to my family and could look after my son, Vibhu, but somewhere deep in my heart, I felt a void. Something was missing and that something was my confidence! When my son grew two and a half years old and started going to a play school, I was left with 2-3 hours of free time every day. So, I took to utilizing this time by reading, writing, learning, and exploring. In this journey of exploring new opportunities, I came to know about Internshala and realised that internships that matter could be virtual too. I was overwhelmed with different thoughts while scrolling up and down the various internships on their website. I was neither pursuing a degree nor was I a recent graduate; in fact, I was much older than a college student. So why should I be selected, I wondered, and my brain quickly responded – I had the required knowledge and an experience of 3 years in software development. Discarding all the negative thoughts I had in mind, I updated my resume and applied to various virtual internships mentioning how my skills aligned with their requirements.
After a few rejections, I was shortlisted for the role of an educator at Unacademy. To change my status from ‘shortlisted’ to ‘hired’, I had to prepare a PowerPoint presentation and record a lesson on a subject of my choice using their educator app. I prepared, recorded, and uploaded a demo lecture of 3 minutes on the first step of conversion of entity-relationship model to relational model, a topic in database management system (DBMS). This demo was reviewed on grounds of subject expertise, communication skills, audio quality, and the ability to teach. The very next day, I received an email from them containing details of my responsibilities as an educator. Through this internship, life gave me a chance to live this Latin proverb – ‘By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn’.
Till date I have created around 18 presentations on various SQL concepts such as select, where, from, order by, group by, and having clauses; data retrieval from two tables simultaneously, aggregate functions; string and set operations; database creation and modification; and joins in SQL. I recorded audio descriptions of the concepts and used PowerPoint slides to explain them. For creating these lessons, I would research into the subject and develop content using elaborate examples to foster students’ learning. I also marketed my video lectures on social media. I used to do all this work during the time my son was at school or taking a nap.
With this internship, not only have I regained my confidence but also gained the ability to multitask. Along with taking care of my son, I created a huge impact on the lives of millions of students. Monetary incentives never mattered to me (though receiving a cool stipend was a cherry on the cake); it was the happiness and pride that I felt on seeing the response on my videos – the positive reviews, comments, and ratings which encouraged me to move further. After that, I got a two-month technical writing internship at RSVR Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The selection procedure included a telephonic interview with the CEO of the company wherein I was asked some technical questions. Once I was hired, I created a guide of the PHP coding standards and CodeIgniter practices, developed a user manual for PHP applications, reviewed the already written code according to the aforementioned guide, and added inline comments within the code. Currently, I’m applying for more content writing internships so as to hone my skills and am still associated with Unacademy. Thank you, Internshala, for enabling me to restart my career and giving me a new direction in life.
Did you also leave your job after maternity and wish to restart your career now? Apply to these internships for women and get started.
