As another year comes to an end trying to inscribe the good memories and farewell the not-so-good ones it gave along the way, I wanted to sit back and ponder upon what really happened in a 365 year journey(well almost). And as I started to gather some thoughts from my poor memory, I realized that this was not just an year, it was an experience that I would never forget in my life; for I learnt some of the most important lessons in life…
Work, pain, joy
My new years, unlike others’, are generally not so enthusiastic; but this was different. I was going to my first job (well Internship technically)! After 23 years, I would be landing in a company! The very thought of it filled my New Year day with all the enthu and zeal. Yeah, I did my internship at Motorola India Research Labs, Bangalore. It was at this place that I had my first experiences of a ‘real corporate world’. “They say you never forget your first job”. Well after hearing this in one of my favorite TV series, I thought it doesn’t sound so real. But, this job remains to be my ever lasting memory. Ofcourse it was not all roses; I had to learn something totally out of my knowledge, had to work with some very annoying devices, had to code in C (I used to loathe working in it earlier); but like they say, the more you run away from something, the more of it you get. 6 months of all the effort was made an ease, thanks to my mentor and the team. I also witnessed a harsh reality of professional life – job termination, how companies ruthlessly fire people in the name of cost cutting.
Life outside college
Almost every time I met some senior at college, they used to say that life is good as long as you are in the safe hands of college (and hostel tooJ). We thought – heck, we’ll have money, no assignments and tests and a whole lot of freedom. But little did we realize that those assignments were far better to tackle than the outside world, accepting the fact in a hard way; as always, life teaches you in a hard way! Some of my woes were solved since I stayed at my cousin’s place but that made way for a different problem – commutation. With 6 buses a day to change and 4 hrs to spend in transit, that was one helluva ride. But in a way that taught me to be more attentive and punctual.
Joy, fate and luck
It was all good until the completion of internship. We had a great reason to celebrate as we would be getting our M.Tech degree after 2 years of hardwork. But the bigger reason to worry about was our job. Thanks to the economic recession, we saw the worst campus placement ever in the history of our college. It was something we never expected. Despite of all the brand name and degree, we had to remain jobless for a very long time. It was during this time that I experienced my first ‘joblessness’. Everywhere I went, people were cursing the IT industry and offering free and completely unsolicited advices to join banks, power plants, what not. Damn! Some of the brightest minds had to struggle a lot to end in a job, let alone a ‘decent-pay’ job. After four months of waiting I finally got into a company. Those four months made me realize the single most important factor in success – luck. You just have to give in to it.
Even now it’s not so rosy life for some of my friends, but we all have started to accept the hard realities of life. Bill Gates once mentioned ‘Life is not fair. Get used to it’. And this year has taught me the same in more ways than one…
