Internship 10101 — IITG
“Let me tell you something boy, I know you are really good at what you do but the only way you are going to get an insanely high paying and perky intern is by coding. Does not matter if you hate it, it’s the only way to get one. ”
— a Wise Senior once said.
Education in India has never failed to amaze me. It started way back in school when we aced all tests and we would master our mathematics and memorize the social sciences. We did good, we had perfect GPA and were extremely proud.
Sounds familiar?
Following what great minds do in India, we studied heart and soul for the next 2 years of our lives and carved one of the most significant achievement.
We were at our dream institutions of knowledge and had heavy expectations about how our lives were going to change. Curious but shy, figuring out what intrigued us, we attended almost all events, orientations, clubs of the freshmen year.
Because we needed to know what all life had in store for us, how was cutting edge technology used here, how robots and drones were made, how a group of college students would start such a bizarre sounding idea and scale it to a billion dollar startup?
Questions? We had a million.
The most important of them — where does my passion lie? How can I make an impact with all the theory I am learning? Some already had answers, most didn’t.
The main reason for questioning intensively was that we were in disciplines that showed us no light at the end of the tunnel, all the theory we were learning — never ever was it clear where was this going to be useful. If you are not from India, Yes we don’t study disciplines that interest us (You can’t change yours easily), so it’s kinda you are stuck but still, you have to look good on academic transcripts, so better study well.
It began with the way subjects are taught here, our respected professors are surely talented, but most neither do they care if you understand what they deliver nor if you know the applications of your coursework. All this makes the discipline a baggage that you have to drag for 4 years.
But cheer up cause it’s not that dull too, we often find meaning with roles in college festivals or diverse student clubs and in a plethora of activities of a hyperactive student community. So pretty much all the learning is self found, with seniors mentoring and passing on their set of skills to the juniors.
At the end of 2 years you might have found a Why ? in your life, have self learned basics of whatever subjects(not university ones) you have developed a love for, gained sufficient industry grade practice with stellar projects or internship. Only to find out that all the “awesome” interns are going to be pure coding.
We are at an early stage of our careers and I believe it is important to explore what you love to do and find what excites you. That is only going to happen if we are ready to expand our perspectives and commit plenty of mistakes and learn from them. So in my 2 years here I explored a lot and there are
4 short insights into my efforts at this.
The freshmen year
I had been a part of Robotics club building on fundamental projects in my freshmen year. Also (to my own surprise) had been part of the dreaded “Marketing team” of our fest with having to do tasks as stupid as selling fest t-shirts every door in hostels (Yes it’s embarrassing!) and having to skip classes to make deals with vendors in the city. The marketing experience was worth all the efforts for its uniqueness.
Real world tech
I could never let go of my love for tech and the fascination how a few lines of code can change how people experience their lives. The most obvious way of creating an impact I could see was to gain a web or app skill. So I did, I was really proud to have an end to end developed project here. (That was technical board website). Also tried a hands on chatbot building in Microsoft’s Code.fun.do that went real good with our entry ringing in top3 in 1st round.
A.I
A.I was an upcoming cult here and I could understand the reason! It was magical at first glance, spell bounding at the second. Once you learned the basic intuitions you could not miss that Deep learning and A.I in general was the future. You couldn’t miss such an exciting field. So I bid adieu to my web dev endeavors and amassed as much knowledge as I could.
Entrepreneurship
Ever excited about startups and curious how unicorn companies initially look like, I saw a poster in my first year about the Ecell here. With my eyes shining with excitement I called up the secy and asked when could I join. Ever since that day i had been an integral part in all the activities, initiatives and purpose.
Proud that I am leading it now and an inexpressible love my team for all the efforts at conducting 2X no. of events that have 3X the impact and reach, raising the bar with our innovative branding strategies and event creativity, i can definitely say that we have scaled humongously and we have just begun!
* But here I am at the start of my 3rd yr *
Me : I have a multi disciplinary skillset in webdev, DL, marketing and leadership.
Internship tests : Can you code trees, Dynamic prog, backtracking, heaps, maps etc.
Me: Nope, but since the profile is software dev I have projects……….
Internship tests: Thank you, but we need competitive coding in our tests, sorry you don’t seem to pass.
Imagine the above happening 20 times is definitely going to affect your confidence. We weren’t really trained to handle soo many rejections but here we must learn :D
You could be skilled in a different field and might have a relatable journey but to date most of the “big” companies in IITG will come for a SDE profile and though you might be a developer you will need to practice competitive coding and if you hate it — you will share similar pinch of a hard time this season.
These times can make you question your life choices, only if you had done only competitive coding and nothing deviating from it you would have been celebrating a hefty stipend in a multi-million prestigious company with heavenly perks.
But if you ask me if I would do it all over again?
200% Bet ya I would!
I believe that when most of my friends are building an outstanding resume,
I am maximizing my efforts into building one of the richest Life Resumes.
Though such episodes can be tough to deal with, with every single of 650 batchmates competing to get the onCampus interns and your friends bagging offers while you are still apping. Just hold on tight because if you believe in yourself and keep going, there’s a lot of good coming.
My goal at the end of the day is to create an impact and if it is yours too, you (yes you, the reader) and me we will both find a way, because opportunists find a door where there is none!
Hope you connect with this and even if it relieves some of your intern pressure, or gives you a perspective, writing it was well worth it.
Would love to hear about what you would have to say.
