I am certainly bothered about......

I am certainly bothered about what people say about me.

I don’t do anything deliberately to receive a negative feedback from the people.

However, I also know that we see the world not as it is, but as we are.

The perception of every person is different because each person is different.

It is, therefore, not possible for anyone to do anything or even say anything without brushing someone on the wrong side.

People like you when you do what they like, and dislike you as soon as you don’t follow their wish.

In this way, you become slave to the all the people whom you are trying to please.

Unfortunately, if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing none.

Instead, we must stand on our principles, whether someone likes it or not.

A principled person attracts only the people of principles and thus he is protected from the shallow and selfish people of this world.

And all relationships based on principles last long because they are not based on mutual exploitation.

Is not a great blessing it itself?

Even if you make some enemies for standing on your principles, you are happy and proud of it.

It is better to get rid of such people as early as possible.

Winston Churchill has said it so wisely, “You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

A botheration that comes due to standing for principles is worth bothering for

-Awdhesh Singh

Important Life Lesson.............

In life, the lesson will repeat itself over and over, until you get it.

If you are in a loop. Ask yourself; what’s the lesson here?

Here are 5 commons lessons people forget.

---

1. Everyone won’t like you.

No matter how many social hacks you master. Everybody won't like you.

People tend to forget that and chase people. You give your self-worth to someone and then chase them to get it back.

How is that sane?

Piss-people off on purpose. Learn to be okay with not being liked.

2. Negative people are just on autopilot.

People discouraging you from going after your dreams? People being mean to you?

They are just chained to their emotional patterns. Trying to cope with what they haven’t let go.

There is no ill intent. I know, it’s not fun to hear it.

But it’s true.

3. But get negative people out of your life.

I know I said that there is no ill intent but there is an ill effect.

Your brain will catch up on the negativity around you. You can’t observe every thought.

You can’t change the people around you.

So it’s best to leave, even if it means being alone.

4. Small wins need celebrations.

How many times something good happened in your life?

And how many times you brushed it off as “not good enough” “doesn’t really matter”.

People tend to forget it’s the small wins that fill the journey with colors.

The end goal won't give you as much happiness as celebrating these small wins will.

Being happy about every little step up. You deserve to feel that :)

5. Comfort zones are miserable.

Yes, you have done something uncomfortable in your life.

Something that challenged you and made you a better you.

But people disregard that it needs to happen daily.

Every time you escape your comfort zone; there is a new one waiting for you.

That’s the joy of life. That’s how you grow.

-Rafael Eliassen

It’s so overwhelming to scroll through social media and see people -

Getting engaged in Greece, being married, purchasing their dream home, moving in with their partners, travelling the world and what not ?

It can be so overwhelming and when you look around at what the world is achieving and I know it can give you a sense of underachievement and make you feel like you’re not enough.

It’s okay to feel this way but you have to always remember- you see what others want you to see about their life.

It’s moments like these where social media can do harm to your mental health and you must take a step back.

Introspect. Look within. Look around.

Look at you. Look at your parents and your friends. Look at how for your mom you’re her world.

It’s so easy to get caught up in things and people who don’t even know about our existence.

It’s in the moments like these that Practising mindfulness and breathing works.

Too many people are busy with other people’s lives and very less interested in what’s going around them.

Finding comfort in a celebrity or a bloggers life is always going to leave you hanging nowhere.

It’s no ones job to make you feel good. You have to do that for yourself. And the day you accept this, you will start feeling and expressing gratitude for minute things :)

Thank you for the sunlight.

Thank you for the warmth.

Thank you for the cold wind.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Just look around and see how many things are taking place just for you ♥️😇

-Ankita Srivastava

Just One Habit..........

If you ask just for one habit, it would be the habit of looking forward with continuous introspection of setbacks. This would save me from self pity along with necessary improvement in my strategy. It used to give me confidence to go ahead that played out in the interview stage. Clear thought and expression.




-Shilpi Mittal

Before starting my journey, I wanted to succeed in lots of things.

I dreamed of becoming a football superstar. I dreamed of becoming the “next Bruce Lee”. I dreamed of winning a Nobel Prize.

Dreaming was good… but useless. I never did anything to make those dreams a reality!

Then, one day, I got tempted to win medals in International Science Olympiads. So I started doing physics in an extracurricular club. An hour or two per week. Was it enough? Of course not!

I failed.

Then I changed schools and tried slightly harder. But it wasn’t enough.

I failed.

Then, I tried the hardest possible way while trying to continue my basketball trainings. Guess what? Still not enough.

I failed.

So I prioritized.

I cut basketball completely and paid my full attention to physics.

Result?

I succeeded. 6 medals.

---

I wanted to program an end-to-end project to gain experience.

But I was super scared. What if I get stuck? What if I fail?

It does not matter. I just started.

Coding and programming every day. Googleing my questions and the stuff I did not understand.

Result? I made an Android App and uploaded it in Play Store.

Is it a great app?

Nah. It’s crap. The UI is crap and the functionality is minimal.

But guess what? I gathered knowledge on how to make a project. Most importantly, I gained self-confidence!

---

I wanted to learn martial arts.

I felt that experience in combat sports would sub-consciously give me self-confidence. After all, physical strength was the characteristic that determined who lived and who died for our ancestors.

But I was scared. What if they hit my nose?

I was also shy. What if I go to the club and I suck?

But I just started.

I signed up for a class and just attended one.

Did I suck? Of course.

A few months later? Not an expert but definitely can defend myself when needed.

---

My point?

We are all humans and it’s natural to feel scared when trying new things. It’s convenient for our brains to stay in our comfort zones. That is what we are used to.

But most of us do not want to stay in our comfort zones.

We want to be better, faster, stronger, smarter!

And all you need to do?

JUST. START.

You feel scared? Good. Start practicing.

You feel shy? Good. You will not when you get better.

You are not in the mood? Good. Start practicing.

The moment you stop the excuses and actually start doing the things that you NEED to do is the moment your life will change.

You still need research and you still need to make good decisions on what to learn and do with your life. But whatever it is you are not going to improve if you NEVER START.

Everyone feels fear. Everyone is scared.

The difference is that the winners act even when they are scared.

It’s called courage.

-Ara Mambreyan
 

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Bloggers Note:  

 

 Watch This Video completely -

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Toxic Relation

Do you think this person has your back? Or can you never count on him?

Do you talk or are you afraid to?

Do you feel buoyed after a tough conversation or completely depleted, drained, exhausted? (Watch your energy levels around this person. They reveal a lot.)

Do you feel you trust despite difficulties, or are you full of suspicion even when things are going smoothly?

Do you feel safe or in danger, vulnerable, at risk?

Do you feel seen, loved, or diminished, belittled?

Is the relationship tough but fundamentally stable or volatile and full of constant drama?

Are you true to yourself or does the approval of the other person take precedence?

Are you clear on how far you are willing to go or is what you are willing to do a moving target you have maybe lost track of?

Remember when you said it would never be OK to be yelled at?

Does this person make you want to be better or bring out your worst possible side? Look. Look at who you have become.

The first is a healthy relationship. The second is a toxic one.

Bonus tip: the word "dependent" is a pretty solid indicator of a toxic relationship.

-Dushka Zapata

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