It feels good. I have done what I was thinking of doing for GATE. It was my target to score and fix my position in the top 100, rather I was expecting a better rank because we are still in ambiguity for some colleges when we are in the top 100. So I wanted a better rank but still, I am quite pleased. So, yes it feels good, really good!

In my case, I used to study for 3-4 hours a day. So, with my speed, it took me like one and a half years- 1 year to complete the syllabus and those last 6 months for practice. I would recommend that if you begin to learn these concepts, then at least 6 months should be given for practice. Apart from that according to you, you should decide your time strategy wisely and work accordingly. For someone who has already started, I would like to suggest that you keep those last 6 months as a buffer. So, in the last 6 months, you can revise, give mock tests, analyze yourself and study accordingly.

Well, the toughest part was getting just 18 marks off 100 in the mock tests in the very first test. It was terrific! I often used to look up to Abhishek Rewaskar to boost my preparation. If he is scoring a good score, that motivated me to perform better in my tests too. If he is in the same college as me, both of us have the same portion, same material, and if he tends to score more than me, then there is something that I might be lacking. So I always looked up to him and this gave me a push to score better.

What I think is, whatever happens in life, happens for a reason! And everything that happens, happens to teach us something. So I believe that there shouldn't be any change in my journey from the first year because everything that I did wrong gave me learning, it taught me something, nothing went wasted. So, everything that has happened in these four years of journey has had an impact on my life and given me some or the other kind of teaching. That's what life is all about, right? We fall, we stand up, we run, fall again and that's how the algorithm goes. That’s how we learn from failures and stand up to strive for success.

Talking of the journey, it all started with Ashutosh Punyani calling me and asking me if I would join their team that would be participating in the Smart India Hackathon. At that time I was in my GATE preparation days but I agreed to take part in it. Since I was preparing for GATE, I told him I wouldn't be able to dedicate a lot of time, but would love to take part. So, we participated and made a prototype and a presentation slide of our idea. We had 4 ideas in mind and we presented them to our college jury and all of the 4 ideas were rejected. At that time, our chances of participating in the SIH were nearly zero. Later, there was one more chance that was given to all of us, like SIH was opening the submissions for some particular topics, problem statements.Luckily a brilliant problem statement suggested by Kedar,our team member turned out to be in our favour! So, we started working on it again. We made a small PowerPoint presentation and showed it to the jury. We were rejected this time too! Now we were completely lost and didn't have any hopes for the SIH. Luckily then, there wasn't a maximum limit on the number of submissions and so we gave it a last try and submitted our idea and our idea was selected for the finals. We felt very lucky for ourselves then and decided to boost up and prepare even harder for the finale so that no one calls us lucky. So, we worked hard for it and finally won the SIH, so ya that's it!

The IT domain is so vast and appealing, that I think it will dominate every sphere. Everything will be dominated by computers.Coding technologies like Python, for example, Python is quite a user-friendly language and can have various applications. Coding is a must right now. One must keep upgrading oneself according to the technologies. So, if you are learning to code right now it will always be beneficial. There are a lot of applications of IT and CSE, be it mechanical, civil, and many others. So, you should try your hands-on coding, and then you have ample of opportunities for yourself.

Actually, when I started, my brother was already in his final year and I was in my first year. So, I came to know that he was doing some competitive coding on hackerrank which was really interesting. So he used to explain to me, how a particular problem is solved and that really got me into it. Competitive Coding, I think, is nothing but using your logic and programming to solve everyday problems.There was a lot of coding in GECA when I was in my first year. So people used to participate in it. Everyone was involved in competitive coding, solving problems at codechef, hackerrank, and whatsoever. So, at that time I also got some boost from our seniors. I think there are two challenges when it comes to Competitive programming, first is many coders give up easily and the second is getting out of the comfort zone and trying tough problems too, instead of being stuck at beginner level problems all the time!

See, this new thing that has been launched by many IITs and NIT’s, they are giving this master’s degree in AI and ML. No one can guarantee that the jobs trending today will still exist for these domains after 50 years. Whereas traditional CSE actually it’s everywhere, because it contains basics of everything that is currently in use. So opening specialized degrees is not a cool idea because as trends go away, students might feel inept with the knowledge they gained in their college years.

The purpose of my life, I have not decided yet, or thought of deeply to be honest. It’s just my love for computer science that keeps me going. I’m always looking for something challenging, I don’t want to stick on to that one simple life, I have to get better. Eventually that is what keeps me up!

There is a lot to learn from this college.This college is full of different types of people you’ll come across, you’ll learn a lot from these people and you’ll learn how politics works, you’ll learn how friendship works. In this period of four years, you’ll know how you can get friends and how they go away. So,you’ll be dealing with all these kinds of  things apart from engineering. Also, you’ll learn how to handle the stress of exams just one night before the exams. So, in these four years, you’ll learn how to be a perfect engineer without learning actual engineering. One thing that a fresher should know is, just be focused on what you love to do. I’m not going to give you a roadmap because everyone is different and everyone has their own specialties, so eventually you’re going to find your own way, your own path. Have faith in yourself ,don’t give up and just keep going!

Credits

Team CATALYST

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