# From college student to Ethereum Devconnect Scholar By [Gerson](https://paragraph.com/@gerson) · 2025-10-20 --- The first time that I heard about blockchain was in 2020. It was during my first year in college where I attended an online call about Blockchain. At first I did not understand much, that first year in college was something hard for me to handle. The difference on difficult between high school and college at that time was something really hard to me. I was learning Python by solving coding problems in each class and learning a bunch of new concepts in programming. Learning a completely new way of thinking it’s not something that you can master in a couple of days. And I completely lost my attention in blockchain in that call. It was until 2023 where I heard about a Solidity course offered by my college where I started to learn stuff focused in Blockchain. As soon as I heard about that course I was really happy and eager to join. On the second semester of 2023 I started to learn about blockchain topics and Solidity programming language for smart contracts. It was a really good course where I got the basics on blockchain and Solidity. And a really cute certificate. During the Solidity course our teacher told us about a local event related to Ethereum and Web3. That event was call Ethereum Costa Rica Day. It was the first time hearing about local events on the technology that I knew that I wanted to focus on. Thanks to the Solidity course I met key people like [Andy Guzman](https://x.com/AndyGuzmanEth). Which he was part of the event organizers of Ethereum Costa Rica Day. And he kindly sent me a free ticket to attend to this local event. Me, as a student in college I barely had money to attend to the event. So I tried not to spend money and save it for transport. I attended to the event and participated in different cool talks about web3 technologies. It was my first time hearing about key companies for my professional development in the field like Nethermind, OnlyDust and Starknet. Months later I started to contribute to different open source projects in the OnlyDust platform. Projects like Madara, Kakarot, Cairo Native from Lambda Class, the Cairo Programming Language, Giza and many more. All these thanks to an event of OnlyDust by Daniel Bejarano. Thanks to be focused on the important things, just months later I had the opportunity to attend to a Starknet Hacker House building onchain games. It was in 2024, the Starknet Hacker House at Belgium. This was something impressive to me. It was my first time taking a flight, first time in Europe, first time traveling abroad. It was a mindset changer experience to me. I spent all my 2024 learning about emerging tech and exposing myself by contributing in open source projects in OnlyDust. Making more than 10 thousand dollars on successful contributions. Also, I started to work on my personal branding as a developer, and I shared all my journey in X where I connected with key people in the industry. I was sharing what I was learning, studying, I started to share most of my OnlyDust contributions, the events that I was attending and more. Building a personal brand is completely needed nowadays, is what it gives confidence to others. What I did not know, is that every month, every tweet, every PR. I was building my web3 Resume and attracting new opportunities to me. Like being invited to Invisible Garden in Chiang Mai, having a free ticket to Devcon last year. Incredible things happening to me at that time. Thanks to all these journey, I applied to the Nethermind Internship at the beginning of the year. Hoping to be accepted in every interview, the good news came to me on April. An email notifying me that I was accepted as a Nethermind Intern. If you don’t know anything about Nethermind, is one of the best companies in the web3 industry. I was impressed by those news, but I knew that I worked hard to finally get that. Three months later the internship had finished. I leave the company amazed by how a real and profesional team in web3 worked together. Then I was looking for more opportunities, and I find out that the Ethereum Foundation had a Devconnect Scholars program. For devs and other categories to help them attend to Devconnect this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I decided to apply and fortunately I was accepted to be part of it. I’m a Devconnect Scholar, a Scholarship from the Ethereum Foundation given to less than 100 people from all over the world. This is how I went from a regular college student, to a Devconnect Scholar thanks to the Ethereum Foundation. Everything that I have done, counts. It's a snowball that I’ve been working on for more than a year. Learning about emerging tech, participating in local events, contributing in OSS, creating a personal brand, posting my journey on Twitter, being proactive and more. All of these is key to succeed in this industry. I’m grateful, privileged and excited for everything that is coming to my life, all these experiences in this year has been unbelievable. Being a Devconnect scholar, accepted in Invisible Garden again, Ethereum Foundation paying me to be in Devconnect this year. I’ll be forever grateful to life for letting me live this. --- *Originally published on [Gerson](https://paragraph.com/@gerson/from-college-student-to-ethereum-devconnect-scholar)*