The beginning of a new beginning
January 2023
Hello dreamers!
Welcome to my monthly newsletter 🎉 Brief introduction if you don’t know me: I’m Allison, an 18 y/o Peruvian TKS innovator, STEM girl and mythology geek. My interests mainly concentrate on alternative energy, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. I enjoy reading books, if you want to hear of my recommendations, follow me on Ig!
Rise Challenge
On January 25th, Rise closed the cycle of application for the 2023 cohort. As a winner from 2022, seeing new applicants give their first steps in a process full of learnings, made me recall memories from my own journey.
I discover Rise on late December 2021, thanks to Tik Tok —Yes, it’s weird, but Tik Tok can actually give you good input for your life if you are selective with the content you consume— so I started my application very late. But somehow I managed to finish everything in 2-3 weeks and submit evidence of a Solar Water Heater made from Recyclable materials as my project.
My application wasn’t easy, it was my first time applying for an international (and very selective) competition, but fortunately I had the Help of Mafer and Daira (two Peruvian winners) in this process. Their advice, tips, guidance, and patience help me to become a Rise Global Winner on September 2022, and I can’t thank them enough for their help.
Inspired by their commitment, I decided to become a Rise ambassador to make people in my country discover this opportunity and help students around the world in their application. I hosted webinars, personalized meetings, and online assistance to many COAR students, TKS innovators and basically anyone who decided to ask for help.
I’m so happy to know that many of you took my advices and decided to give it a try! Now that the application cycle is closed I only want to congratulate all of you who applied and decided to get out of your confort zone. Growth only happens when you try new things.
Whether you are confident or not, I’m rooting for you guys. And remember this: the result won’t define your value. The results doesn’t matter as long as you decide to do not let you down. This is an amazing opportunity, but so are many others around there. In any case, good luck to everyone!
Walmart Challenge
From December 2022 to January 2023,
, , , , and I have been working over a Challenge proposed by Walmart Blue labs:How can Walmart improve the customer experience by developing simple & scalable in-store digital touchpoints or experiences that further connect customers into our digital journey?
So what was our solution?
It was Wallace, a voice assistant that works with AI technology aimed to help customers with navigation, shop with dietary requirements, create shopping lists, personalized purchase recommendations, and to enhance the community experience.
I have no complains about my team, they are all incredible people with a huge commitment with our project. I learned a lot working with them and I can’t be more grateful.
So, weeks after our submission we were notified that we had been selected as one of the 5 finalist among several projects from over +70 countries! We were so excited about this news and so we worked towards creating an amazing presentation that Vivek pitched in front of Juan Caride (Store of the Future Leader at Walmart Canada), Julia Perlotto (Innovation Lead at Walmart Blue Labs), and Colton Schwenk (Research & Development Specialist at Walmart Blue Labs).
And guess what? We were one of the 2 winner teams!
Going deep into Alternative Energy
As you may already know, I’m currently into a Focus in TKS. Basically, I’m researching, reading papers and creating scientific articles about a topic that interest me: Alternative Energy.
My last steps were oriented towards investigating the role of ammonia in the energy transition. If you want to learn more about my conclusions and experiments, check my article on medium! (At the end there is a video that explains my research as well)
Self-study of a language
Learning a new language can open the door of many opportunities. From being able to communicate and learn from natives, to discover and read content that is not translated in any other language.
Knowing many languages means increase your access to information.
As a person who’s native language is Spanish, who learned English almost on her own, and that is currently self-teaching herself French, I have some tips and tricks in the process of Language learning that I would love to share with you.
Have a plan: If you don’t know what you will study, how are you expecting to actually study? What you need to do is to search or create a specific study plan where you include the topics or activities that you need to master in order to improve your skills in your target language. The index in text books is of big help for me.
Prepare your schedule and stick to it: Google Calendar and Notion are what helps me keep my schedule organized, but there are tons of apps and methods out there that can be of help for you. The point is to stablish a specific schedule for yourself, select a time for every single day of your week when you will study. That way it will be easier over time to develop the habit of practicing the language.
Have a data base with your resources: Having a place where you can save all your online resources together can make studying really easy, since you won’t need to lose time looking for your study materials. I would recommend you to use Notion, Excel or Google Sheets since those have easy and helpful tools.
Find a native buddy: There’s no better way to learn than to asking a professional. And who can be more professional in your target language than a person that has it as their mother tongue? Find someone who can correct your pronunciation, grammar, increase your vocabulary and help you practice the language you want to learn! The best part is that you also increase your social skills. Some apps like Fiverr or iTalki can help you connect with natives, but you can always look for people on Discord, Instagram, LinkedIn and almost every other social media platform!
Books I recommend
How successful people think: A book by John C. Maxwell. I really enjoyed the content, it shows you how fixing your mindset can lead to changing your life. Having a more positive way of thinking to approach different situations can make a huge change in the results that you get. Highly recommended!
Atomic Habits: Written by James Clear, this book show you how a small habit can change your life entirely. And depending on how good is that habit, you will predict how good are going to be your results. I haven’t finished the book yet, but it looks as promising as I’ve heard. Give it a try!
If you don’t have much time to read, you can still receive the content of the book while you are doing other activities. Use the audiobook version of those titles! With this link, you can subscribe to Scribd and enjoy of thousands of books, audiobooks, articles, and magazines for free during 60 days!!!
Audiobooks are really an amazing way to consume growth content when you are busy. I give recommendations based on my experience, but don’t believe in me. Experience it yourself ;D
Thanks for reading! I wish you an amazing start of February and don’t forget to follow me on social media <3
This is Dreams and Ways, a newsletter about my latest updates, learning process, and personal growth.