Story of my college life
Note: I graduated in June 2023, this blogpost got delayed for some reasons.
Ahh! College life got over (no sigh!)
Yeah, I don’t have much sadness or anything like that college life got over. Instead, I am happy with my learnings from college and those 4 years from people around me. And, this blog will be all about those learnings, college gossip with subtle targets without taking their names.
My Background and Choosing Computer Science
I come from a middle-class family, whose father is a civil engineer and my mother is a homemaker. We used to live in Chhatarpur (a town in Madhya Pradesh). But, then my parents & I decided that I would prepare for the JEE Exam, so we came to Jabalpur (a City in Madhya Pradesh) because my family relatives live here. But, cut to 2019, My school ended up with the uttermost disappointment, due to the bad result of the board exams (as i shared in my Quora answer).
Then, the college search started, and mostly for private engineering colleges, so, at the age of 17, I ended up joining a tier-3 college in Jabalpur, so that I wouldn’t have to travel much and would be living with my parents, and would be able to focus on my studies.
For context, till now I only had “an interest” in “AI”, got this fascination from some News, and magazine articles, but didn’t even know a single word about computer science, programming, etc.
So, I did a Google search about Programming and How to get started but ended up starting with the book “Dennis M Ritchie Book for C” (not a great book for a newbie).
Early College Days
Then the college opened on 20th August 2019. Got Introduced to classmates, teachers & HOD. And, It was a pure school vibey college in terms of timing, and attendance at least for 1st-year students, I used to attend every lecture daily, and complete the homework, and assignments like a good boy. But, used to cover at least 5–6 pages of HackerEarth docs tutorial for C++, and DSA. And, I started contributing to Open Source through HTML contribution in Hacktoberfest 2019.
Mentors and New Experiences
I got introduced to Professor Nitesh Dubey sir, he is the person I most respect in the college, he taught me the actual basics of programming like memory, address, and pointers. And, in general, helped me a lot over the time in college life.
2nd Sem., I along with some friends attended the first hackathon in IIIT-DM Jabalpur, called HackDoomna. There, I met Ajwad and got a good bond with him, and he was in 3rd year, so, i used to seek a lot of guidance from him and the most common questions were — “what to do next” & “How to do a balance b/w Competitive Programming & Development” xD
College Life Amidst the Pandemic
Our college introduced a DJ Night just before the Covid Lockdown, And, I was the person who didn’t like this party, loud music. I refused to come to the event in the Unofficial WhatsApp group, but some folks from that were cribbing about “We are the family, we will attend” and because of all this, had the first one v/s all situation in class. And, this was the time, the term called — “Global Family” was introduced.
COVID Outbreak happened in March 2020 and this was the time accelerated. By that time, I knew basic DSA along with basic Web Dev. Our college introduced an Angular & Ionic workshop which got me a little interest in Mobile App development. From the hype of GDG events (via Twitter, YT recommendation) I got interested in Flutter and tried building some basic Mobile Apps.
In the middle of all this, I used to send a lot of LinkedIn connection requests and Twitter DMs to the people who were already working in companies or were senior to me in good colleges. Because, sadly our college didn’t have any clubs, activities or something like that. And, my seniors were just focused on Service-based companies (like Jio, TCS, Infosys, etc.) and Academics, so I had to reach out to other colleges’ folks. And, in this process, I made some great friends in my life and attended a marriage amongst one of them, last year.
Internships and Competitions
I got some interest in ML and data Science, so explored that side, built some basic projects and participated in a bunch of online hackathons, and won one of them.
With all this, I used to also post these to LinkedIn, so through that, In early 3rd sem., i got my first internship as a 2nd founding engineer in early age startups, co-founders used to work at Facebook, Google, IBM in US, so joined them as a very low-ball offer as intern to learn, where i learned React, AWS, GitHub Actions, from scratch. And, It lasts for 8 months. But, parallelly i used to do Competitive programming like participating in Google Hash code, Google Kickstart, Google Codejam, and Facebook Hacker Cup (all details). In all this, I used to hunt for some basic Open Source contributions.
Contributions and Learning
Then, github1s, an open source project that helps you open any GitHub repository in VS Code-looking environment in Web browser in just 1 second (yes, it was earlier than GitHub created github.dev), which I joined as a maintainer. While working on this, I got introduced to Gitpod, which was a mind-blowing thing for me that you can build, and contribute to projects just directly from your Browser or preferred IDE without any code cloning locally, which was a pain to me because I had a weak laptop which had limited hardware which was gifted (by someone special 🙃).
In all of these timelines, I cannot even afford to chat, hangout with the “Global Family” (college classmates). So, I just had a very close group of 3 folks, which i made while taking some subject notes or just coincidence.
In the 4th sem., I appeared for SWE Intern interview for Google (blog), which i didn’t ace. And, even before that, I didn’t used to get much support from other college teachers and this worsened after Google’s rejection. Some teachers & most of the students used to mock me for this.
Cut to 3rd year, I got introduced to the GitHub campus program via the GitHub Externship program. So, had a hard time collaborating with teachers to apply for this program because it requires paperwork from College faculties. And boom! Our college was the first in Jabalpur & 3rd in Madhya Pradesh who become the GitHub campus partner.
Our college teachers hardly know about GitHub and all, so I used to manage their account, set up their Enterprise account, and with this started the First Programming club in the our college history and took some sessions of juniors about teaching basics of Git, GitHub, and other basic programming concepts.
On the other hand, I was miserably failing most of the interviews (tweet)
At the end of 2021 (before the 6th sem.), Our class hosted a freshers party for Juniors. And, this was a full roller-coaster, made some new close friends (for the time being). But, also got disconnected from some of the other folks while all this.
In the 6th sem., second cohort of GitHub Externship programme, this time i’ve applied for this to be part of the GitHub Engineering team and push classmates & juniors to apply for this. Sadly, only 4 folks applied including me.
Got selected and Joined the GitHub India Insights team (Feb. — April 2022) 🚀
Before got this selection, an engineer from Gitpod reached out to me via Twitter asking if would i be interested in the Internship role. So Interview was already in progress. Just after the GitHub Externship got started, I got the offer from Gitpod to Join as an Software Engineer Intern from 15th May 2022.
Navigating College Social & Personal Life
But, balance is needed in life so, got a big break in my personal life, Got broke up after 6 years of a relationship (from school days) 💔. This was the toughest phase of my life, I used to cry a lot even during internship work. But, two of the friends I made in college helped me a lot in dealing with all that. To date, I am thankful to them for that.
Whole 6th & 7th Sem, I roamed a lot in the city with these college friends, because things were a little peaceful from the professional side, and I got the kind of dream job that was from wondering about the product and working for the product.
During this time, I used to mentor juniors and help classmates, and seniors with their prep. and job interview tests, etc. Enjoyed that time, as it was a good feeling to return the same thing that I got from my other connections from different colleges/companies.
7th Sem. ended with the Gitpod full-time offer as a Software Engineer, and this was the biggest offer in our college history, this changed a lot of things.
For some reason, friends got repelled off, that close friend since 2nd sem. who was really like — “Pata aaj kya hua (do you know, what happened today)”. She randomly stopped talking to 3–4 days after this big event of my life. And, due to her, I lost another friendship and it was with the same who helped me a lot during my breakup and she was just caring in general (which was rare in my college folks).
8th Sem., I was mostly disconnected from most of my classmates and was busy with college management, for placements of my batch.
And, left with 2 close friends at the end (at least till 30th Dec 2023). Farewell and formalities came up, did a lot of fake laugh in pictures, but sadly unable to make more good friends in college.
tl;dr; of my College Learnings
- True family is the one you’re born into.
- Believe in your Hard work.
- Avoid arguments, brawls fights in college days -> It could lead to a lot of time consumption.
- There is no golden path, try-fail-try, explore, and create your own path.
- Your future is in your hands, not dictated by your college.
- Sidestep people who exude arrogance or selfishness; they often mask their insecurities. But, in real they didn’t know the basic topics like Slicing, Linear search, etc. 🙃
- Seek guidance externally, don’t limit yourself to your college boundaries, and reach out to people over LinkedIn, Twitter, or any platform for help.
Reflecting on a Chapter Closed
As I look back, I realize the journey was more about personal growth than academic achievement. Although I didn’t forge numerous friendships, the few I made were genuine and lasting. As one chapter closes, another begins, filled with anticipation for what lies ahead.
