Starting your B.tech In CSE or IT? Consider all these.....

1. Teach yourself how to learn: First and foremost, college is not like school. Faculties won’t spoon-feed. There are no set questions that could appear in your life after college. You have to go DEEP. Whatever you study in college will mostly be irrelevant to the job you will end up doing. The subject CHEMISTRY that’s mandatory for first year students? Well, that’s cow dung. You don’t use chemistry anywhere in your CS career, and even if you end up using chemistry, the chemistry you study in college as part of first year won’t help you. So, one of the most important things you have to learn is how to learn. This is a crucial skill and if you get to a place where you can teach yourself anything with the help of resources online (and CS doesn’t even need a college), you will be good to go.

2. TOOLS: Familiarise yourself with C, C++, and Python programming languages. For most purposes, C++ and Python would be enough these days. What’s important though is that you understand that these are merely languages that are used to communicate with the computing system. At the core of all this is what goes on in the background, how things are communicated, how you can communicate to the system to get what you want done. Different languages work for different purposes, and based on your interest, you can further refine and focus on a particular set of languages and tools. Until then C, C++ and Python should help you sufficiently.

3. INTERNSHIPS: From your first year summer, try to go and intern at a startup or a research lab in the country, or even outside the country through exchange programs such as MITACS, Globalink, Bose scholarship program, etc. Try and acquire real life experience of whatever it is that you want to do. Be it software development, data analytics, data science, or research in any CS area and publishing the research - whatever it is, go and acquire experience in the real world. It helps to try your hand at different things during different holiday periods (winter/summer/4 years) so that you will know exactly where you want to go and what you want to do by the time you graduate.

4. PUBLISH: Whatever you do, it’s good to get your work published. It’s better if you could publish in international tier-1 journals, but equally respectable journals are also great. A couple years down the road after graduation, if you suddenly wanna try your hands at a PhD or a master’s degree, these publications will definitely help. And you will most certainly not get an admit at atleast the top 20 universities in US/Canada/Europe, without any publication record, at least not for research driven programs. If you develop a sudden interest in research and you wanna try your hand at it, and you also want to do it at a reputable institution, it’s a must to have a previous research work and publication track record.

5. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS: More often than not, the professors you work with, the people who mentor you in your internship, the PI’s and post-docs at the research lab, all of these people are going to be important somewhere down the line. It’s important to build a close working and professional relationship with such people who can shape your career, even if you can’t see how. These would be people who could help you connect with a company for recruitment drives, professors who could put a word for you at a research lab, mentors who would recommend you for admission if you plan for masters or PhD. Don’t discard these people and relationships as unimportant.

6. GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE: If you’re from a tier-2 or a tier-3 college, or if you’re from India, any college except IIT, do go out of your college for internships in other premiere institutions such as IIT, IISC, etc., and connect with influential professors, work with them in their research projects, get to a level where they would be willing to recommend you in case you decide to go for post-graduate studies. This is crucial and important, and even if you just decide to go to job and stick to the job, these relationships are often priceless and continue for a long time.

7. BUILD: In your spare time, always keep building. You don’t necessarily need to be a competitive coder in order to attain success with your BTech CSE degree. You can pick up quantitative finance and dabble in the stock markets with your math and computation knowledge. You can pick up computational neuroscience and do simulations, build models, and solve some cool stuff. You can pick up Data Science and Statistics related skills and go ahead and solve some pressing problems at big companies through platforms like Kaggle.
   
   There are a lot of things you can do. Just do a surface level study of what everything you can do entails - and then pick one that sounds like something that would make you wanna forego eating and sleeping. And go build yourself alongside in that particular niche. By the time you get to your 4th year, you’d be close to being an intermediate, and some even get to expert level, atleast for a college student.

8. Don’t get emotionally attached to anyone: I spent a lot of time (thousands of hours) for people in college, helping everyone around, having fun, roaming around aimlessly, spending time pointlessly, handing things to people that they could have done for themselves, helping them cutshort to finale. In the process, I didn’t spend enough time on my goals, didn’t spend enough time getting to know myself, getting to know what I wanted to learn and engage in.
   
   Sometimes, some people I was emotionally tangled with had the power to throw me off path, catch me off guard, and derail my progress - which they did now and then. All this took me away from pursuing knowledge and wisdom, spending time on frivolous things which looking back, never mattered, for people who didn’t last.
   
   4 years after college, everyone who was a priority to me back in college, is nowhere to be found, only to realize that I was never anyone’s priority and that I was just being used as a first bench, regular attendance person who lends notes and teaches before exams.
   
   By all means, do cultivate relationships, network the heck out of it, make connections, but before all this - take care of yourself, your goals, your ambition, your dreams.

9. Travel: Every two months or so, travel to all the nearby places from your college, one after the other. Travel builds essential survival skills, patience, and helps you flourish socially. It also trains you in coming out of your comfort zone every now and then to venture into places you’re not familiar with. While traveling, meet new people, make new connections, and try and keep in touch with few whom you really admire. Traveling not only teaches you important life lessons, it helps you unwind after months of hard work, to help you get back to work with renewed vigor. You could also consider traveling for internships, research work, conferences etc., as an unwinding trip. It pays to do those things and travel without spending much from your end (as colleges sponsor for conferences, and companies sponsor for internship relocation in some cases)

10. Pick up new skills: Don’t approach your college life as a linear, CS only, career building exercise. I wish I had picked up finance and investing skills back in my undergrad time, coz I later found out I actually liked Finance, Quant Finance, and Trading/Investing. I also wish I’d dedicated more time on exploring Statistics, Data Science, and Data Analytics. I applied for MS in Computer Science programs in the US, EU, and Canada. I got rejected by all the colleges I applied to, irrespective of a very good profile because of one thing - lack of research publications and lack of strong, well known recommenders from brand name schools. Whether it is research, or data science, or even exploring computer architecture - whatever intrigues you even a little bit, go full on and explore it - atleast until you know you don’t want to go further, picking up new skills along the way.

11. A word about romantic relationships: Having someone to love, falling in love, experiencing butterflies and all that is fine. I sincerely wish I’d spent more time on myself, skill building, exploring different fields, rather than on people. Especially when it comes to a romantic relationship, it takes a lot of your time, effort, and emotional and mental energy. You’d be better off investing that time on yourself. Once you get out of college, there will be a lot of opportunities to meet, date, and settle down. While in college, maintain healthy friendships, but go after your dreams first.

Every other obvious suggestion - that CGPA absolutely matters, it pays to graduate with a CGPA above 9, it pays to have research publications, time management is important, college friends won’t come so far, most people are temporary, your skills are permanent, etc., are already mentioned. So, I have refrained from saying those and given some suggestions I think are important. If I went back in time, I’d say my past self all these things and hope he’ll be better than I am right now.

-Shravan Venkataraman

I knew this colleague of mine. She always fell for unavailable and married men. Always. I knew her for almost 4 years and I always found her dating already "taken" guys.

Was she bad? Was she insecure?

No.

The reason was "Pattern" - She had a troubled childhood. Her dad was a famous lawyer and always remained unavailable for his kids and wife. So this woman grew up believing that men always remain unavailable. We have such behavioral patterns - we don't even realise and it captures our lives. Our future. Our present.

So understand these patterns in your life. It can be anything. Your relationship with food or mother or friend - you will realise that often we do things when our mind is in auto-pilot mode because It is easier to follow a pattern than actually changing it.

Do this one thing.

Identify patterns in your life in all spheres. Relationship, parents, career, friends, money and health. You will realise that your life is already easy if you do what needs to be done - it becomes difficult only when you get carried away with patterns.

-Kruti Naik

You may sacrifice your physical and mental health for family and this persom......

Please put on your oxygen mask before helping others.

If your mental health is in jeopardy, how can you help someone else?

Sometimes we make small sacrifices — I might take on some extra stress to help a friend, or give myself a little less time for self-care to help a loved one — but I can’t give it all up.

You see it with people who opt to become someone’s caretaker without enough support. While noble, I’ve read countless stories of people whose lives and health fall apart because they devoted their everything to someone else.

At a certain point, they can’t even be effective caretakers for others because they haven’t taken care of themselves.

No one, no situation, no anything, is worth sacrificing all of your mental health for.

-Jordan Yates

Best Thing About Medicine

I have taken time to complain about medicine, so it is only fair that I should take equal time to explain what is good about medicine. Because I particularly complain about the state of primary care, I must specifically cite the reasons that primary care is the best thing in the world, which it actually is in many ways.

The practice of medicine, and particularly primary care, is a huge privilege. People of every race, every religion, every sexuality, and every social circumstance will come to you and literally put their well being into your hands. That is a major responsibility and a true honor. It is great to get to know people over the course of their visits to your office.

Nothing can really beat the feeling of happiness when one of your patients does really well or when you save their life. It is so exciting to see an angry, hostile patient with lots of serious illnesses become happy and start feeling better. It is fun to see the successes that each person manages to find, from getting a new job to overcoming addiction. If you combine the “good parts of medicine” with complete avoidance of the news, television, and drama, you can have your own little world of positivity.

Of course it is not always positive, sometimes you find a cancer, or people do die. Sometimes you stay awake worrying about people. That is depressing of course, but the question was what is “best” about medicine.

The best thing about being a doctor is the patients, obviously.

Primary care gives you an opportunity to know all about a person and their lives, and every person is unique, as cliche as that may be. I am glad to have the privilege of trust with the patients I care for. I do understand very well that trust needs to be earned. So I try to earn it by going the extra mile. And it helps that I have a problem with perfectionism—not a great trait personality wise, but useful when you are a doctor. Where else can I be rewarded for something that most people find annoying?

Some people go into medicine looking for a field where they “don’t have to deal with people.” What the heck? Why would you go into medicine, then? Believe it or not, I am intensely introverted. So I get extremely exhausted after my day. So, it is mostly work and sleep for me. But from my patients, I get a lot of positivity in my life which makes me feel happier. Life is hard for everyone, and I am in the position to know just how hard. If I can improve that for some people, then I will. And that is the best thing about being a doctor.

-Amy Chai,MD-Internal Medicine,MS-Epidemiology

Harsh Realities

1. A girl was raped and dropped near Bahadurgarh railway station in a critical condition while trying to save a 4-year-old kid. Later it was revealed that the kid was involved with those rapists.
2. A woman with the help of 4 others robbed a 35-year-old man after he gave her lift on Faridabad-Gurgaon road.
3. A 20 year old suffered severe injuries while trying to save a woman from drunk men. No action was taken against the accused as the woman refused to lodge a complaint.

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When I read such headlines in newspapers, it makes me wonder about the existence of humanity on the earth. Does it exist, if yes, then where?

What happens if you help someone and get involved in some trouble? You will think twice before trusting a stranger in the future.

Last year, I was at the exit gate of Mall of India, Noida where a seller boy came to me and insisted me to buy a rose for Rs 10 so that he can buy some food for himself. He mentioned that he had not eaten anything since morning (can’t say if he was saying the truth or not). I thought for a while, obviously, I did not need the rose. I also did not want him to stay hungry. So I thought of giving him a burger that I had got packed for myself to be eaten on the way. The moment I opened my purse/bag to take out the packet, he sneaked his hands into my purse and tried to escape with my wallet. I was shocked. Luckily, I got hold of his hand and did not let him run away. I had tried to help him.

A few days back, I was in Kamla Nagar Market, New Delhi with my mother. A random guy came to me and ask for my phone to call someone as his phone’s battery was dead. I wanted to help him as he seemed to be a genuine person but my mother told me not to give him the phone. He might run away with it. These cases are common these days. I did not help him.

My parents had always taught me to help anyone in need but now when they read such highlights, they tell me to mind my own business. That’s how we change with changing times. 

Once we become a victim of such crimes, we try to stay away from them in the future. The fear of putting ourselves in danger/problem stops us from helping someone even if we can.

Sad but true. :-(

-Nishu Jain,IITK

This is How You Work Hard

Short Answer : Motivation

Long Answer :

Through out my life, up until this point, I have worked much harder than average.

How do I know that? I just do.

When I was preparing for JEE

I’d wake up at 4 am every single day, weekends or not, and keep the same schedule 3 straight years, the last one being my drop year. I had a strict schedule and I tried my very best to not divert from it.

My motivation for the first two years was that I wanted to do it for my parents.

Not really a good one, right? But it still worked.

And then, when I couldn’t make it in my first attempt, and when I was on the verge of not taking a drop, the mere thought of being able to lift my head with pride if I were to clear the exam after my drop year, added as an additional motivation. It was strong enough to help me persist for another year.

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When I was in college

There were times when my college mates would ask me often, how do I continue studying sincerely even after making it into an IIT. The answer was simple - I had motivation(s).

I had put 3 years of my life getting into a top college. I knew the value of those three years more than most people and there was no way I would have let them be for nothing By not making the most of the opportunity of studying in an IIT.

And so, for another five years, while most people would study in the last minute, I would start earlier and made sure I did the best I could, trying not to think much of the end result and believing in my process.

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When I started working

Work life balance is supposed to be better if you’re working in a place like London, or so most people in India would think, but not when you’re working in a start-up filled with people who want to learn quickly and grow fast.

Almost every single day I have worked here, I have put 12–14 hours on an average, stretching up to 16 hours at times. All that, because I had reasons to do so.

• There is no such thing as job security in any company. Especially when you’re away from home, you can’t take it lightly.
• And when you’re the only earning member in your family, you have to make sure you do enough to not just make your job safe, but also earn enough to give your family a good life.

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Many answers would have already used the cliche of working smart and not working hard. While that’s true to a certain extent, you still got to work hard.

You may find it difficult to find the right motivation for everything you do. But trust me, if you invest enough time finding it, working hard isn’t really so hard.

Edit:

For those who think that one should find their passion and then work hard for it, please know that ‘passion’ is a very overrated and misused word. Life’s reality is way different than always having time to find your passion

-Anshul Sharma

If there is one thing I really gained from my college degrees,it is.....................

If there is one thing I really gained from my college degrees, it is “perspective”. Everything else, including knowledge, was just a by-product.

Perspective about how to set ambitious goals, both academically and personally. Perspective on how to set about achieving those goals.

Perspective on how to manage multiple deadlines at the same time. Perspective on how to manage time efficiently and effectively.

Perspective on which career path to pursue in life. Perspective on how to prepare myself to succeed in that chosen career path.

Perspective on how to create new friendships and maintain existing friendships. Perspective on how to differentiate between true and fake friendships.

Perspective on how to become a more confident person. Perspective on how to imbibe that confidence in every aspect of my life.

Perspective on the importance of pursuing hobbies in life. Perspective on how to achieve that crucial balance between work and life.

Knowledge, friendships, mentors, confidence, career - these are all by-products. Perspective is the single most important learning from my college life.

-Rohan Jain,B.Tech IIT-K, PGDM IIM-A

How earlier Generation became wealthy smoothly while today, even "successful" frugal people struggle....?

1. They didn’t spend money on cable/satellite TV, cell phones, internet access, monthly subscriptions for video games, or any of the other crap people spend money on today.

 

2. Most meals were prepared at home. At work, you brought your lunch with you.

 

3. Taking the family out to a restaurant for dinner was a special treat, and usually planned in advance. It was rare. It was never because you “didn’t feel like cooking today”.

 

4. The idea of paying for bottled water would seem ridiculous.

 

5. They didn’t stand in line at Starbucks buying overpriced coffee.

 

6. They didn’t buy junk they didn’t really need unless they were willing to part with their hard-earned CASH for it. Credit card use was minimal.

   

7. Anything they had to finance, such as a car or a house, was accompanied with a large down payment. Loans were rare. Being upside down on a loan was more rare. They didn’t buy a bigger house than they needed, or a more expensive car than they needed.   
8. They committed to putting a portion of each paycheck into their savings account.

9. No impulse buying. No online shopping, no Amazon same day delivery. Selection was limited to what was locally available, and you had to physically go look for it and pay cash. Spending money required effort.

 

10. Less spending on entertainment in general. Most homes didn’t have a TV in every room - there was one TV in the living room, and it wasn’t something engineered to rival the local movie theater. Separate TV’s in the kids rooms were unheard of, they didn’t need that.

 

11. There were no cabinets full of specialized cleaning products. You didn’t need a separate cleaner for your stove, your windows, your counter tops, etc. You had one cleaner for wood, and one cleaner for everything else. You may have made one or both of these cleaners yourself. Many families made their own laundry detergent. (My wife still does this).

  

12. Energy costs were lower because you didn’t have a million devices in your home using electricity. You turned lights off when you left the room. You would yell at your kids if they forgot. Today, people leave their TV on all day on music channels so the freaking dog has something to listen to. You didn’t need a $500 app-controlled blender.

 

13. You made your coffee by the pot, not by the cup. An 18 pack of basic Folgers K-cups costs $10, while a can of the same Folgers grounds that will make 125 cups costs $11. Let that math sink in… $10 for 18 servings vs $11 for 125 servings.

 

 

14. People spent less on transportation; they didn’t move an hour away from their job because “you can get a bigger house there”. They got a smaller place near where they worked, and pocketed the savings. They bought a car that met their transportation needs. Cars were only considered a “status symbol” if you were already wealthy. If you weren’t rich, you didn’t care as long as it worked and fit all of your stuff. If it broke, you read the owners manual and figured out how to fix it yourself, or you took it to a mechanic. If you still owed money on it, you would never have traded it for another car until it was paid off.

   

15. Saying “I can’t afford it” was perfectly acceptable. You didn’t need to keep up with the Joneses. If your neighbor was more successful than you, you thought “good for him” - you didn’t resent him, or think the government should do something to make life more fair. If your friends wanted to take a group vacation, and you couldn’t afford to do it, you said “Sorry, maybe next time.” - you didn’t say “Sounds great!” and put it on a credit card.

 

16. They shopped by price, not by payment.

 

The second part of your question is wrong though; successful frugal people don’t struggle with these things today either. It’s just that most people aren’t doing them. Look at your paycheck - then imagine what your savings account could look like if that number wasn’t going out the door to monthly payments.
  

It’s just as easy to save money today as it was back then. You just have to have the will to do it.
  

-Ron Rule

Bounded by Your Degree?

I am currently pursuing PGDBA course and I am in my 2nd semester at IIT Kharagpur. I graduated in Civil Engineering from the same college in 2018 and have come now to study Business Analytics.

I have a Mathematics course on Regression this semester. The same course has been taken by a 3rd year junior of my department (Civil) as an Additional Course. He aims to do a minor in Mathematics along with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering.

I also have a Computer Science course here where the professor has not been able to take in more students as the seats for it are full. Many undergraduate 3rd year students from departments other than CS have taken this as an additional course which resulted in limiting seats for it.

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You see, students are now aware, and they understand that their education is not limited to the courses their department offers which was allotted on the basis of their JEE rank.

And that is a very important thing to note. Your career is not bound by your JEE rank now, or by the degree you get when you graduate. There are opportunities available that can enable you to apply for companies you dream of at the end of 4 years during placements. Institutes provide you with such opportunities where you can take any subject outside your department as an additional course if its slots do not clash with your department timetable.

Obviously, you would have to work harder in the college – you would have to clear a set of courses required to get a minor in your desired department which would mean perhaps 5-6 hours of classes extra every week every semester.

But that’s OK, work harder now than the ones who did it before IIT. Acknowledge the fact that you haven’t lost it if you got a poor JEE rank, and IITJEE is not everything nowadays.

So, there may be a case where you and your CS friend apply for the same company and both of you get selected or you do but he/she doesn’t during placements. Certainly possible, because in today’s world all that matters at the end is your skills, not your JEE rank or your degree

-Rajat Gupta,B.Tech(Civil)-IITKGP,Doing PGDBA from IIM+IIT+ISI

Whats your typing and reading speed?

I can type and read fairly well, probably type at 50wpm and read at 500wpm. In school I went for both a typewriting class and a reading course.  Besides some certificates (such as Indian government's "lower" exam) that I don't even know where they are, those courses were practically useless. But, both classes gave me very diverse reading material to learn. The first week at my typing class, my course content involved some interesting thesis connecting gypsies of Romania and Indians. Internet didn't fully come to India at that time, thus such random discoveries of information were precious enough for me stick on to such courses. 

At one point, I set out to read every article in World Book and Encarta (precursors to Wikipedia) but after a few thousand articles felt that I would never be able to finish ever. I consume more than 200-300 pages of information on an average day and listen to 1 hour of audio book courses while driving. Nothing unusual. 

That said, treat information like fat. Both are very useful commodities that make up our survival. They were both very scarce a century ago. Both are very tempting. However, both are equally harmful when not assimilated well. I suffer from both temptations.

In our modern world, how many words can we read is akin to asking how many calories are present in a particular food.  More is not always better especially when the consumed content is not properly handled, categorized, and used effectively. 

While skimming a lot of useless reports is fine, be very careful when you consume serious text. When reading War and Peace, your WPM does not matter. It matters more how much you can connect the different characters in the setting of Napoleon's invasion in Moscow. Even if you read 25 words per minute, you are in for a spectacle. 

See each book as a map. It doesn't matter how well you memorize every point in that map. Value the journey you are going to undertake with that map. That exploration happens in your mind. The book provides various pointers to take that tour within your mind. You don't necessarily need to read more books. Even one book a month is good enough. In that moment, simulate the content in the mind, draw connections to existing points, and savor the journey.

-Balaji Viswanathan

Parents,Children,Low Self Worth,Unsuccess

Low self-esteem is a trait that can be transmitted from parent to child. There are two commonly encountered scenarios in which parents with low self-esteem interfere with their children acquiring a positive and stable sense of their own self-worth.

Scenario 1—We are worthless so you must be as well

In this scenario the parents have such low self-esteem that they cannot imagine that anyone they give birth to could possibly have value or be successful. They may consciously or unconsciously communicate this message to their children:

We are worthless, so you must be worthless as well.

The parents do not notice or point out their children’s strengths. Even when the children have successes, the parents either ignore them or say and do things that diminish their importance.

Example—The Spelling Bee

Harry wins his 3rd grade class’s Spelling Bee. The next step is for the best speller in each class to compete against each other for the title: Best Speller in the 3rd Grade. His parents assume that it is a fluke that Harry got this far, so they want to prepare him not to be too disappointed when he inevitably loses in the next round. Instead of praising Harry, they say:

Don’t get your hopes up. There are probably a lot better spellers than you in the 3rd grade. Be glad you got this far.

By the time he was grown, Harry was fully indoctrinated to believe that any successes that he had were probably lucky accidents. Because of his low self-esteem, Harry never felt equipped or entitled to go into the profession that really interested him. Instead, he aimed low and settled for a boring job and a life that was below what he was capable of achieving.

Scenario 2—Don’t think you are better than us

In this scenario, the father (usually) in the family is working at a blue collar job and resents everyone who has it easier or better than him. When his children show an aptitude for schoolwork or special talents of any kind, instead of feeling pride in their successes, he resents them.

Often this parent has narcissistic personality disorder and is afraid that if his children excel at anything, they will look down on him. He reacts to this fear by devaluing his children. He does not want them to have more self-esteem than he does—or a better life. His basic message to them is:

Don’t think you are better than me!

Example—Dan the Bond Salesman

Dan was raised in a working class family. His father Joe had started working right after high school. Now he is the superintendent in a big luxury building. He changes the tenants lightbulbs and does minor repairs. In return Joe gets a small salary and a free apartment for his family in the building’s basement.

Dan’s mother Maria came from an immigrant working class family. From her point of view, her life is good. She has a husband and children and when she wants to, she can earn extra money by cleaning tenants’ apartments. That and taking care of her three children and her husband keep her too busy to see that her son Dan is smart and should aim higher than his father’s job.

Dan’s first job is as temporary doorman, while one of the full time doormen is away on vacation. Dan’s father sees this as Dan’s likely career path, which would culminate in a stable union job as a permanent doorman. Joe sees no need for Dan to finish high school, let alone go to college. His view is that if this life is good enough for him, it should be good enough for his son.

One of the building’s tenants takes a liking to Dan the summer that he is the doorman. He encourages Dan and is the first person to ever suggest that he should go to college. Dan has low self-esteem, but with this encouragement, he starts daring to dream that someday he might have a better life.

Cut to the future, Dan has a good head for numbers and is likable and polite. The tenant gives him a job in his firm and trains him to be a bond salesman. Dan is now married with a family and making good money. But..inside he still feels as if he is not really entitled to be this successful. He still feels as if he needs his father’s approval.

Dan has just bought a new Mercedes Benz and goes home to his parents, hoping that his father will be proud of him. His father takes one look at the car and says: Don’t think coming here in your fancy car makes you better than me! You are still just a little shit acting like a big shot!

Punchline: Although not every child raised by parents with low self-esteem develop that problem, without other protective factors, it can be an outcome.

Elinor Greenberg, PhD