The journey to graduation (2019/2020)
This article is about my personal experience in the 12th grade and if it had a certain message to deliver, it would be very simple — you can start big things right where you are. 🧐
To begin with, this is not something to brag about. During my last year in school, I had a vast variety of activities. Just like in earlier classes I continued to attend to a theatre club twice a week or even more often as well as studying in LSYM (Lithuanian School of Mathematics) where I would receive ten complex maths problems each month. Even though the senior year seemed to be a period of innumerable endings, it came out as a time of new beginnings.
The last year in school began with an epic party which took place on the 2nd of September in 2019! This day marked the start of my journey as a senior. Just a couple of days after coming back to school I and my friend Linas Adomavicius launched a non-profit organisation that is now known as “Programavimo Klubas” (English translation: Programming Club). The meetings would happen once a week to discuss every member’s ideas and organisation’s further progress. 🚀
September was generally a month of new beginnings, for instance, not only did I launch an organisation but I also started Turing School which offered a CS50 AP course that had been originally formed by Harvard University. 👨🎓 It was quite a challenge for me because the lectures I had to attend were given once per week, every Friday. For each lecture, there was a fair 50 km distance to travel from my home city.
There was one more beginning in the midst of September — right after another big party I joined a debating club “Argumentuok” (English translation: Argue (imperative form)). 🏛
At the end of the month, on the 21st of September, I participated in a hackathon and I was pretty successful — I won a trip to Warsaw/Riga/Tallinn!
On the 12th of October, our Programming Club finally organised the first event to which three lecturers from different cities and companies were invited. The event had three different topics: Artificial Intelligence, Web Development and Cybersecurity, nearly twenty participants and some were awarded prizes.
A few days after the first club’s event, on 18th of the month, I had a theatre performance in Rokiškis located roughly 250 km away from my home city.
The exciting highlights of October were mostly about getting rich (haha) as we received 7 thousand euros in investments and even getting a new workplace for our organisation. It was located in the local children’s library which later was the site of further projects and events. The finale of the month was the 1st place we won in a local quiz called “IQ kovos” (English translation: IQ battles).
The beginning of November was full of trips and fun! It started with a vacation to the biggest metropolis of the Baltics, Riga. I and my friends spent a couple of nights there. Later on, on the 14th of November, I had the last trip with the theatre club to Lazdijai and then I had to leave the troupe.
From 20th of November up until the middle of December I had a lot of projects and events coming up. On the 20th day, we had our organisation members present their projects.
Six days after that, our debating club held public debates about marijuana legalisation in which, contrary to expectations, us, the youth were against legalisation while boomers were not.
In the same month, I gave the very first interview about our organisation as it was drawing more and more people’s attention. On the last days of November, I also participated in a “FinTech Inn” that was considered to be the largest and the most significant conference in the Baltic region. Then, on the 29th day, I gave a speech about Artificial Intelligence and Modern Politics. The next day Programavimo Klubas had a meeting with 2 programming students from VU (Vilnius University).
Winter came along with our new organisation’s event “CodePlunge — Arduino Edition”. The topic was programmable hardware and the event took place on the 5th of December. During this month our organisation received 25 Arduinos, a PC and some more stuff.
On the 10th of December, I visited Turing School headquarter. That day I helped our organisation form partnerships with “Metasite” and “Kings Lietuva” as well as met some school students from Vilnius who shared the same interest in starting their own organisations such as ours.
In the middle of the month, I finished my applications to the UK and the Netherlands universities.
In contrast to the last week of 2019, the new year began with a scholarship that I received from Turing School on the 7th of January.
On the 25th of January, our club held another event “CodePlunge - WebDev”.
Right from the beginning of 2020, we started presenting our Programming Club’s projects and introducing the club to the library and various local schools. Not only did we introduce students to the club but we managed to set up the organisation’s facilities in a few visited schools. This activity lasted nearly until the first day of quarantine regime that started on March 16th.
Only a month before quarantine I had a three-day trip to London. Just how lucky was I to travel a couple of weeks before the mass pandemic?
On the first day of spring, we had a fun presentation at LMS (Lietuvos Mokinių Sąjunga, English translation: Union of School Students in Lithuania). Then, on the 23rd of March, I received an internship at Tesonet, the largest IT company in Lithuania.
The whole country was in total lockdown in April. So from 26th until 28th days of April, we organised four online lectures that attracted up to eighty students.
On the 5th of May, I won a random contest at local Plunge regional awards. A couple of days after I performed a speech for my Lithuanian language-speaking exam. Yet again on the 11th of May, we organised another online lecture about hacking the most widely used online grade book TAMO that we had been using ourselves! Our lecturer was a computer science student from one of the best universities in the world — Cambridge! Nearly a hundred students joined the lecture. Two weeks later we had one more online lecture about game development.
Finally, as summer was approaching and the classes were over, on May 25th I finished school with a pretty decent 9.4 GPA, also finished LSYM on the 30th of May.
At the beginning of summer, on June 2nd our Programming Club prepared a surprise for “Tik Tok” fans — we organised an event “How to create a Tik Tok clone in an hour?”. Students from all around the world joined this lecture, for instance, we had students from Florida, Illinois, Texas and South California states as well as some from Pakistan and Australia! The lecturers were also from London and Edinburgh, Scotland.
As the last year of school has officially ended I am now planning to move to Vilnius on the 6th of June and a week later I’ll start the internship at Tesonet I have received back in March.
One more of my ideas is coming to life soon! I and Agnė (a member of PK), who is a member of our Programming Club, in cooperation with a few more Lithuanian organisations, are initiating a national hackathon that is taking place in July. 🤫
Overall, as unbelievable as it seems, my last year of school journey had not only ups but downs as well. It all still came out as good but everything comes with a price tag — there are times when you have to sacrifice to achieve something. Although, it was never possible to do it all on my own and I would like to say a sincere thanks to everyone who supported me on this path. Yet again, I don’t mean to show myself off, this is solely my own journey that is not going to stop. 🌎 🔊
Programavimo Klubas (Programming Club):
