My college life in a nutshell:
- 5 years
- 55 subjects
- 5 international trips
- 6 internships
- 11 countries
- 1 Backlog
- 2 degrees
- 0 lafdas :)
It all started in August 2019; a shy, introverted, skinned 18-year-old boy coming from the hell of JEE days, not scoring the desired rank and landing in IIIT Gwalior, sad and disappointed.
Hey everyone! I recently graduated from IIIT Gwalior with an integrated dual degree, and this blog reflects my 5-year college journey structured into 10 semesters from freshman to graduation.
Before starting college, I made a few resolutions:
- I don’t know what and how, but I have to do something big
- Grades won’t matter to me, no matter what others say, and I will only focus on my skills
- I will not depend on the on-campus placements
- I will be open to relationships, but I won’t be running behind and wasting my time.
These were my best decisions, which required good discipline.
1st semester
I was a good boy during the first semester—I attended all classes, studied for exams, practiced questions, etc. In the first month after receiving my new HP laptop, I began coding on HackerRank. I used to spend every weekend at home. In addition, unlike most, I skipped all the parties and outings with my classmates. Since I’m kind of a person who likes to say no to parties so that I can party better later, and today my parties need passports ;)
During the Winter break for 1st semester, I studied the basics of all the data structures and algorithms.
2nd semester
During the first month of this semester, AASF hosted Webkriti, which offered interactive tutorials on full-stack web development. Following this, they held a competition in which I took part and, along with two other class members, developed a tech-fest website. When COVID-19 hit in March 2021, classes were initially paused for 15 days; everyone was happy, but who knew the lockdown would continue for two straight years?
COVID-19 is the best thing that has happened to me during my college life because I have had all the time to work on my skills. Everything was in online mode; I remember someone calling me 15 min before a mid-term exam and telling me to be active on the WhatsApp cheating group. I woke up to write an exam for which I didn’t know the subject name properly or who taught it.
I utilized this time to the fullest; from April to August, I explored everything I knew, like Machine learning, blockchain, MERN stack, android development in React native and Java. Also, I started practicing DSA on leetcode and did all the standard DSA questions during this time.
3rd semester
After exploring these many domains, I continued with MERN stack web development. I started looking for internships on Internshala when I realized that web development is an easy skill everyone knows today, which is why there are many applicants for every opening. However, I got a call from a founder that I was selected for an internship of Rs.6,000 I worked with him only one day and didn’t pick up his call another day because the energy and time he drained out of me on a single day was wild, and this triggered the thought that if I put in the same effort for Google Summer of Code why won’t I be selected.
So, I started researching the program’s ins and outs, messaging past GSoCers to gain insights, and looking into the codebases of the projects previously selected in GSoC. At that time, I only had confidence in React and Node.js. I remember joining the Rocket chat GSoC community channel, where their program manager mentioned that last year they had more than 200 applications for only two slots and next year they were expecting more; this is when I realized I would have to pick a complex project where there is less competition to better improve my chances. I was researching only when AASF declared they would host the open-source track in their winter projects program starting that year. A CNCF project was mentioned in the list, which is challenging for beginners; I filled out the form within 30 minutes. I spent my winter break learning about cloud native technologies and how open-source community & contributions work.
4th semester
I won’t be talking about classes or college as it was shut until the final exams of the 6th semester, and everything was in online mode.
This semester, I continued contributing to the Thanos project, applied for LFX mentorship and got rejected as most of my contributions were in React, and projects for LFX were in Golang. Hence, I started learning and contributing to the backend of Thanos, made quite a good contribution, and fortunately got selected for the Google Summer of Code program.
I spent my 2nd-year summer break working on completing my GSoC project, and I also determined to practice at least 1 DSA question daily on leetcode because I believed that having GSoC on my resume would get it shortlisted and with DSA, I’ll be able to clear the interviews.
5th semester
Right after GSoC, I applied to the LFX mentorship program, was selected for the Kubernetes and Kyverno projects, and decided to go with the Kubernetes one. I worked for three months on completing this project, and during the end, I pinged the kyverno maintainers for the internship. Fortunately, they had one, cleared the interviews, and started working with them after the LFX program. I was employed by Nirmata, which owns the Kyverno project, and they had their offsite in December; I got to meet everyone in the first month of my internship. Also, it was the first time I sat in an airplane and traveled to Bangalore. Also, an excellent one-week stay in the Oberoi Hotel, what else a 3rd year intern can ask for.
6th semester
In January of this semester, I received an email from a hiring manager at VMware asking if I would be interested in an internship with them. The interviews were scheduled, and I started working at VMware in March 2022. The college was reopened in April to go and write the final exams. The following summer break, I spent most of my time working on my internship project and learning Kubernetes more in-depth.
7th semester
In July, I got the news that I was selected for a travel grant to attend OSS Summit Europe. In August, I applied and gave the interviews for the Mercari Japan Internship and secured an internship to be done after the pre-final year. I also traveled to Bangalore for a week-long offsite at VMware’s office. I traveled to Ireland and Dubai in September, my first international trip. I had to boldly decide to skip all my minor exams and give it after returning, all six exams in 3 days.
This semester was not easy academically as I lost my sense of learning the theory and writing in the exams; it took a lot of work for me to remember things. Also, I attended a very few classes this semester.
In the winter break, I decided to take things lightly as I was already working at VMware and had another offer from Mercari for the next summer break. That’s when I created my Snapchat account.
8th Semester
In January 2023, I registered for the 8th semester and flew to Mumbai for a visa appointment for Japan. I planned to stay five days to explore the city as it was my first time in Mumbai. One morning, I was chilling in my bed when the 7th semester result was shared in the WhatsApp group, and I found that I had failed in the Mobile computing subject; this news hit me a little hard as it was the first time I was failed in any subject in my life. I tried to be present in the moment and enjoyed the rest of the trip.
Mercari called me at their headquarters office in Tokyo, Japan, for the one-week onboarding, and this trip happened in the first week of February. It was my first time traveling to any east asian country. I slept very little during this trip, with the sole goal of seeing as many places as possible during five days. After coming back to India and reaching back to college, an incident happened that hurt me a lot emotionally, and it took me months to get healed from it. But as everything happens for good, I realized that incident made me emotionally mature and strong.
In mid-March, I had my Netherlands visa appointment scheduled, and I received my passport stamped a week before my scheduled departure; it was a 12-day trip during mid-April that covered various cities in UAE, Switzerland and the Netherlands. I had to skip my 2 lab exams, which I gave later.
During this semester of merely four months, I planned and made two international trips visiting four countries and also had an emotional breakdown. My mother had to go for urgent surgery; I was doing two internships parallel, one at Mercari Japan in their Platform infra team and another at VMware. I had Zero attendance in every subject except one; however, I managed to pass in every subject. This semester was the most adventurous one of my college life. Eventually, everything went well.
Summer Semester
Getting enrolled in the summer semester was a unique experience. I had one active backlog from the 7th semester, which needed to be cleared during this period. However, there was a catch: the professor had to consent to teach the course again over the summer vacation. As it turned out, the professor who had failed me had denied doing so. There were six students, and we all started running into other professors’ offices to ask them to teach us, but everyone denied our request. Finally, after much effort, one professor agreed, and we all had to attend classes in the scorching heat of Gwalior in May and June when the temperature reached around 50 Celius. I finally passed in July with a fun experience of clearing the backlog while pursuing an engineering degree.
By the way, my 17-month internship at VMware also ended in July.
9th Semester
Like the 8th semester, this semester also involved two international trips. One was at the end of September in China, where I was invited for a talk at KubeCon, and another was taken to Europe in October to attend SOSP. During the China trip, I also covered Hong Kong because of my desire to visit Disneyland. I covered 8 cities across 4 countries during the European trip, including Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, and France. I didn’t work for any company this semester; instead, I decided to figure out my future goals and plan. Attendance of 75% became compulsory this semester, so I had to attend the classes. There were only two subjects, so it was not a big deal.
I considered going to the USA for a master’s or to Europe for a P.hD I spent a good amount of time researching and talking to people. I also read entirely my first technical book, “Learning eBPF” by Liz Rice, to learn about Linux systems internals and how we can play with them using eBPF. After deciding to enter the industry, I started looking for Open-source and cloud-native computing roles. However, no one was hiring junior engineers due to bad economic conditions. I sent many cold emails to founders and engineers of startups in the cloud-native ecosystem. Nevertheless, they were not hiring or only hiring senior engineers in their native countries, not remotely.
In the final year, we had to complete a Master’s thesis project to attain the degree. I had the most brutal panel and was afraid, but they didn’t bother me much this time. I was about to enter the presentation room when I got a call from an HR from HackerRank; I called him back after returning to the hostel. It was a phone screening call, after which he scheduled an interview with the CTO. I had to give three interviews and was selected for a six-month onsite internship in Bengaluru. However, I was unsure about joining HackerRank for various reasons, but after talking to a few folks, I decided to go for it. During this time, I also interviewed with Civo. Still, the interview didn’t go well as they were looking for a senior Go developer and only considered my profile for interviewing because of my past experiences.
During this semester, I attended regular classes after a long time to meet the attendance criteria, traveled to six countries during two international trips, gave my first international talk at Kubecon China, decided to work in India and not go for further studies, found that getting a remote job during this market condition would be challenging.
10th Semester
I came to Bengaluru for an onsite internship at HackerRank. This was a full-stack internship. I was mainly in Bangalore this semester, so I do not have much to share about college, but I had to travel twice for the mid and final evaluation of the Master’s thesis project. It all ended with a Batch photograph, and I vacated my hostel room on 15th May 2024.
I’ll be writing another blog encapsulating what I have learned over these years, but this ends my half-decade college life and the significant life milestone of completing a formal education of two decades. See you in corporate!!