Da's Life

Thirty-two months of college life are over officially and there is still time before my joining in Bangalore so I decided to summarize or share some of my experiences if I want to put it in simple words. Just hoping they could be helpful, in case you are going to do same mistakes as I did. My intention is to help rather than showing my writing skills, if any! This post mainly contains the advice/rules/practical information that I wish someone would have told me when I was in first year. Please enjoy them with open mind. But, Hold on!! Here is the “disclaimer” which you should really read before proceeding further.

1. Whatever follows in this post will be statically true for approximately 95 percentage of DA students. Not all. There is no truth ever written which can be true for all. As time changes so does everything.
2. I like CT, I have nothing against anyone or anything related to CT. As some of my best friends and roomie where into CT, though they now are in IT industry!
3. It is probably the longest post you would have ever read. So have patience. One thing I promise is it would be worth reading it. And you may thank him/her, who referred you here.
4. Exception exists for everything. 
   

Talk to your seniors.

You will learn more about everything while interacting with your seniors than you will ever learn in class or even talking to professors. They will be a constant guide of your whole college life and even after that. When I came to Bangalore, one of my seniors called me and inquired if I needed any kind of help in getting flat or anything. That is cool na?? In college, your senior may know what kind of prof. is teaching you or what kind of projects you need to do. You may seek their guidance when there is problem and you are stuck. Our seniors were great, hope you can say same about yours! Even if you have not talked to them for 1-2 years, don’t worry, go ahead and talk to them about how everything is going, discuss your problems and believe me, if one is not an egocentric, he/she will be cool to you.  I had many books that I didn't know whom to give, so if someone would have contacted me, I would have surely given to him (I don't have them now!) but my point is make as much contacts with your seniors as possible. For your problems, if they can, they will try to help you or show you a better way. At least they will understand you and not be like professors who will start asking question

about your pointer and all that. So just interact with your seniors.

You will forget almost 95 percent of what you study in class. I know because I did forget - especially CT and EL and I just crossed 4th year. So, it is preferable to keep all slides with you even after college.  

Don’t be shy or feel embarrassed to say that I am coming from RC, or to say that I studied. This is what I have closely seen in first two years of college. Everyone try to sneak into RC and try to come out hidden. Wish that there was some tunnel which leads him to the room secretly. And god forbid some of your friend see you while you are trying to sneak out of RC, what possible reason could you give if they ask you (it’s always like their eyes are asking you question), " I was watching series" or "sleep". Naahhh.. Just be a man and say yes, I was studying. OK? “pura din CS to nahi khel sakta na” or something similar. Then they won’t say anything in your whole college life. And anyway this habit of going to RC, vanishes as you come to last three semesters. However, it is considered the best place to study for entrance examinations. Be it CAT or GATE or GRE. Be genuine to your friends and yourself.

Some tips for getting good pointers (subjectively)!

In my view, anything above 7 is decent, considering mind-set of our professors. Go to 50 to 80 percent classes -- especially to last lectures just before in-sem and end-sem.
Read slides - especially slides of last lecture before in-sem, A must. Even if it is not told explicitly to read them. RAMs of most Prof. are not good. They all seem to have long-term memory loss.

Talk to teacher at least once a month or even after a class. If you have some genuine doubt then go to their room and you can ask about anything or problem or doubt or whatever but, just remain in touch with them. (It is always preferable to drop a mail to faculty asking his appointment!!) This would effect when teacher is finally grading you. Believe me NOBODY is impartial, though exception exists (always). Try to be personal or at least good with TAs. They can increase your marks if they remember you while checking papers. Nobody checks paper once TAs have graded them.

Always go through previous year question papers!! Sometimes 40%+ of the paper contains questions from them, true for some professors. i.e. Prof. Sam Chat.

For CT, notes chaat lo, yar. Yeah, mug them up. But, surely you should try to first understand them but if you can’t, then mug them up anyway. (Especially Fourier Transform ka formula to 3 semester tak ditto ayega) And if you are confident that you are good at this art of mugging (I wasn't) and you can rely on your brain to vomit in the exam, in a presentable manner, then you really don’t need to go more than 50 percent of CT classes, however interesting they may sound.

An interesting thing that I have observed so far is if first two in-sem are easy, like only from notes, then most probably final will be on little tougher side, in the sense that questions will be from exercises of the book that teacher refers in class or questions left as homework in class. So if you have time after mugging up notes, than do the exercises of corresponding chapter of referred book. Sometime question are as-it-is from there. But, remember only after mugging.

If you sense that the teacher is too busy or not teaching much, then most probably exam is going to be completely from lecture slides/notes or what he taught in last lectures.

These rules don’t apply for Prof. Anish Mathuria and Prof. Sanjay Srivastava. :)
They belong to different class of professor altogether. Giving their exams is always a fun.  

If you don’t get above 6 pointer after this then you are nut case and don’t read after this. It is not meant for you. But, if you don’t do above things and expect good results; please save your excuses.

Try to avoid buying so many course books. If possible try to read from e-book as much as possible. I guess most of course books are available in e-book form, if needed take print out of relevant part or take it from your friend/share. I am telling you this because at end of 4th year many of my friends had nearly 15 odd big books and did not know what to do with them, as you can't carry them home if your home is far. Some you can't even give to your junior as course or Prof. for that course change and as a result book referred to, also. So try to minimize your expenditure on purchasing books. It is sort of wastage of money in long run, and any way you have e-book for the same. I purchased just one book in my whole B.tech. life.(Etronge!!)

But, there are some books that you will never regret purchasing (especially for IT). Indeed I highly recommend you to purchase them not because prof. asked to go for them (Actually, no one told me about them, surprised!) but because they are as per industrial standards and standard in themselves and also not to mention in-expensive. They are not only useful in courses but also after you have learnt that course. i.e. For placements. They are:

1. Introduction to algorithms -- Corman
   Reason: All standard algorithms you will ever encounter in your life are in it already. It can be text book for all IT courses in our college.
2. C programming language -- Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
   Reason: Still the best programming book I have ever read. Though you shouldn't read it as your first programming book. But, after you had some programming experience you will love reading it.
3. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach -- Kurose, Ross (Must for Networking/Security fields)

Don’t be regular, but don’t be regularly irregular either. Both extremes are just plain boring and won’t do any good either to your personal growth or grades.
If you have a dream to do something or to work on something and if you go on delaying them, remember dreams will die with time in your mind, but they will still be there in your heart; only time will not be. Please do yourself a favour, don't ever procrastinate. 90% of dreams in life are not worth pursuing as they are mainly out of infatuation or momentary sprites. You get to know what is worth pursuing for yourself and you get to completely know about your strengths and weaknesses. Human brain doesn’t change much after 21, so stop blaming yourself for being criticized, just keep in mind, 90% of people always are busy pointing out mistakes and strengths. But, it is only 10% who don’t give up even after doing several mistakes. And, of course, none can be good at everything!

Labs @ DA-IICT.

Even writing about it feels so useless, as they are in reality. But I am going to say some concise words about it. Theory is what you try to learn in class. Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. Remember EL or CT lab! Get used to it. :) You are not going to learn anything there anyway. May be just pretending to work, however everyone knows that you are doing nothing.

Learn to touch type.

Yes, it is very important. I don’t care what you think. I will be straight with you on this. No one will tell you to do practice on a software, how to type without seeing keyboard. But, it is very very essential. I simply can't stress it enough.

See this link! It is worth reading, inspirational and will probably bring back the point that how important it is to learn to touch type. Though I have to tell you, author of this post has very interesting style.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.in/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html

Placements @ DA-IICT.

In summers of 3rd year make sure that you are good in these languages C, C++/Java. Be sure you are pretty comfortable with at least one OOP language, preferably Java or C++. Try some sample aptitude questions. Nearly all the companies ask them. I couldn't clear initial 8 aptitude exams just because I hadn't practiced enough and my friends who were preparing for CAT cracked those exams easily. It is just a matter of practice and not intelligence, as golden rule of life says "Your I CAN is more important than your IQ".

Interviews.

From resume, most important points are your projects. If you have not done any project, start doing them. If your pointer is around 8 and don’t have any good project to show then you are same as 6 pointer (Just eligible, nothing more than that.) Project can be open source or college project. But, it must be worthwhile, something that you can say in interview that you learned while doing it. They would believe you if you say some technical thing in interview, because they know nothing about your project. :P But, just be confident in what you say.

 
What dress you wear during placements matters a lot. Don’t be lazy in that. It is your first impression. Talk to SPC member as much as possible, even when they say "mail kar denge kuch hoga to". Most of the times, there is something that they do not share with all other than their close friends. Any company where you get complete project to work on, then that is good company because that will add to your personal growth and

add value to your resume.

Before placement fair begins, SPC will conduct a seminar mostly to frighten you. Especially AB’s (Bakerji) speech made me feel, with deep saddening inner expression mera to ho gaya ab.  And I think you will also feel this because that is the purpose of these seminars and nothing else. If you see the statistics you will know every next year as average CPI is decreasing (thanks to our professors), Average CTC or number of A graded companies visiting campus and number of students getting placed in A companies are actually increasing. But in this seminar you will be made to feel like you have to work very very hard and you are just shit of this college. I suggest, be serious, prepare well but don’t ever let SPC talks get on your nerves or anything for that matter.

College has placement cell that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t try off-campus; you must approach professor and ask for some company where he/she can recommend you. Also keep watching for posts in DRDO, ISRO, BHEL etc. Go for GATE, if you are interested in Public sector. You may not know which opportunity is waiting for you. RC.
As I have seen, most of students don’t know that they can access their library account (which book they have issued) from hostels or search for books from hostel. Use this link to login.

http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in:8081/webslim/login.asp.
Usually, your username and password are same - your ID, until you change it.
You can check that which books are issued on your name, hopefully after this you will not make century in RC due. You can check same for others too. i.e., if you want to know which books are issued on their name (If they don’t know not this little trick and if they have not changed their passwords only).

Use RC as much as possible, issue books, even when you couldn’t read them all. At least try. It would do more good than harm. If you have reading habit, you will miss RC once you pass out. Our RC is as good as the ones which are there in IITs.

Self-control. Below is what Nikhil Marathe, best gem of our batch said.
“The first is self-control. In college, nothing else matters! If you want to get things done, if you want to stay on the right path (subjectively of course), then nothing else will matter more than self-control. Not your intelligence, your wealth, your environment or your friends. Only your will-power. You and I are living in a world where addiction is easier than ever to fall prey to. Information bombards us from everywhere, a plethora of online services crave for our attention, and in the physical world, chatter, video, liquids and powders demand our attention. These distractions will stop you from giving your time to the things that matter the most to you. Those who can stick to their course will fare better.”
For self-control, there are many tricks/methods/process like mediation, yoga and all that. But most simple trick is this. Whenever you are taking decision, just keep the picture of you father and mother in front of you, and feel what they will think about you if you take this decision. If you really really love them, you will never do anything to harm that feeling. And if you take the right decision; believe me you will know yourself how much you love your parents and how much importance they hold in your life.

As I see it, main thing is -

Everyone knows in the heart what is right thing to do, it is only 'Doing' that lacks.

Just have will. Way is yours.

Find out what you love to do, be it coding, singing, playing instrument (I learnt flute, guitar), playing cricket etc. Though, I do not recommend playing CS/ Dota/ quark/ AOE as addiction. I played them once a month or semester just when I got nothing else to do.

It is hard to be good at something which you do not love to do.

http://www.yosefk.com/blog/work-on-unimportant-problems.html

Very important Semesters are 3rd, 4th, 5th. From point of view of making of pointers and also for learning, they are formative. 6th is also important, depending on your field of choice- electives.

Don’t propose a girl in 4th year. And you will remember it as a tragedy. She will think, itne din so rahe tha kya? You know what? It is not even worth it as you are out of college in few months anyway. And I think, this love thing (by which I mean college love), is highly over-rated. It is not worth it in long run. Make friends.
If you are a girl ( have crush on a boy or liked him for long) propose a boy anytime, statistically speaking he will say yes in 98 percent of cases, if he does not have gf already. If you don’t say it to him, he will definitely be taken. You gonna regret then!!

Little things which matters a lot.

And just to inform you about fogging, it is only waste of time. It does not effect in least bit to mosquitoes. Try not to depend on it. I think mosquitoes sort of enjoy it like a perfume. In my room I noticed their population increased after fogging. Strange!!
Laptop with i-7 is not a good idea, unless you have an external battery and don’t care about life of you laptop. i-5 is good for most of the purposes. When on night out, try to avoid going to sleep between 6 - 8 am, there is no point. Get your breakfast and then sleep. You will love your sleep more than ever and may be your time table will improve with next day. When there is a fire in or near hostel, run to washroom not for fire extinguisher. Most of the fire extinguisher in hostel does not work. Try not to depend on them. Once I was screwed because of them. Damn you Parmar.

Some of our dreams are not worth our joy, some of our wishing are not worth our wanting.
Choice of electives.

Do not take advice of every teacher seriously. I have seen that when time comes to choose your subjects during third year, students go to teachers, most of time there favourites, to ask what should they do, what is that is good for them? As I have already said no one is unbiased, if you go to a CT teacher there is no way he is going to tell you straight away to take IT. He will cunningly (may be a wrong word to use) try to convince you that there is bright future in CT, and will say that you are hardworking and I will help you among other things. And if you go to IT teacher he will do the same. And you know what, neither of these teachers is wrong in what they are saying. Only missing thing is, even though what is said is true, it is not the best choice for you.

You should remember that teachers may be good in what they teach, they may not be good in helping you take decision in life, don’t childishly come into words of teachers, do your own research over statistics for yourself.

One teacher, well respected Professor told that it does not matter what subjects you take during your undergraduate, no one sees it, take anything. Though I have lot of respect for him, I have to say that you are fucking wrong, sir. Those of who are reading this, let me ask you this question if you would have taken commerce during your 11th and 12th would it not matter? Ok, let me ask another, if you have taken EL or CT and sitting for IT company for placements, aren’t you confused? or over-smart? In interview they will say - we need IT guys, or CS students and no one else. Though you may say I know IT things and have done the basic course so I have knowledge comparable to others. A very fair argument!! But here is the thing, they will not listen to this. They will simply say we have been instructed to take students from CS branch. And I am sharing you this because this happened in Deloitte interview. A hard working, guy from CT, having 8 pointer, good at programming as far as I know was simply refused, in the interview itself, saying you do not fit our profile. Do you see my point? They don’t listen to your argument however right it might be. So make a strong case for your selection.

And in some rational sense it is fair, too. Because if you take CT and EL as your electives and sit in IT company then these are some of the possibilities that interviewer will think about you (if not obvious ones) you are not interested in IT, probably don’t know coding or don’t like i.e. (you have not taken IT), or you are over-smart to take any branch and learn everything but expert at nothing or you are confused, don’t know what you are doing with your life, where you are headed or you are not sure you are going to join the company or want selection just as an back-up option. In either of cases, you are trying to befool the interviewer. And let me tell you that, it is not that easy. They are really smart people, experts and have lot of industrial experiences. Imagine 6th grade school student trying to impress a college student. College student would get it, right. Won’t he?

Always take course like Algorithms in elective, even if it be painstaking. This is true for 95% who are not sure. For those who are sure about their life, go ahead, never look back and regret about not feeling pulse of your inner conviction, but also never let convictions be biased or based upon temporary gushes of professor or friends or trends.

In my interview, I was asked question from the subjects that I took as optional ones and rationale behind my choice and other questions related to these subjects. If I would not have taken Network protocols, cryptography and security protocols; it would have become next to impossible for me to answer any of the interviewer’s questions. My technical interview lasted for more than 40 minutes. So if wanna let you know my take on this then I would say that it matters like a hell that which subjects you choose. It is far better to be king in hell then to be slave in heaven.

Try not to waste too much time on facebook, you will never be remembered for that (just reminding). When you look back on your college life and remember yourself wasting more than an hour refreshing facebook pages then probably you are not being just to your life. This is what goes in mind of most people while reading newsfeed or stream: "Whatever'', "Whore.", "Your life sucks.", "Song lyrics.", "Inside joke?", "Needs a therapist.", "What the fuck am I supposed to do with that", "want to tell me something then tell me directly, don't facebook it." etc.

While taking professional decision.

You may say that I have interest in EL and CT so I want to take it. That is fine. And it is not wrong to have interest in it. But you may have interest in playing guitar or flute (in my case) as well, but that doesn’t mean you gone make it your career choice, at least not now.

Forget about your interest (Unless it is exclusive). Interest is a very fragile thing. Today you are interested in this thing, tomorrow you may not be. Then there is no point from where you can turn back and start the game again. Don’t take professional decision on the basis of your interest (At least not now, if you would have taken every decision in your life on basis of what you like, you would not be here in first place). Even a fool can do the things that are at its heart, but it takes a mountain of courage to do what is right for you. So don’t make “interest” as your prime, the most important criteria, for choosing your branch subject, this is with respect to choosing IT or EL or CT. I have seen friends regret taking EL, if not openly and in their fourth year going for “introduction to algorithm” course. If you take decision from your mind you will rarely regret it. (Even if decision turn out to be wrong, you will have a reason at least to blame on options you have had at that time). It does not matter in life what your intentions are , If you are doing the right thing even for wrong reasons you are gonna get successful. If you want to know more about how to choose the subjects, please let me know.

If not at other things, at least I was particularly good at choosing electives. For example in my whole last year i.e. last two semesters, I had to take only 4 subjects, all of my choice i.e. not limitation that this much of SC are left or one Technical elective left or could not do HM because of exceeding maximum limit for the same. And to add further, due to choice, I had to sit for only 3-4 exams in total. Yes, in my fourth year I gave only 3 to 4 exams, including in-sems and end-sems. Grading was mostly on basis of project or presentation. What a relief, that there are no exams in whole semester, isn’t it? And most importantly I still managed to get 9.15 pointer. :)

And to be frank, I worked the least in that year. So if you make smart choices, your college life will be awesome and less frustrating as well.

Series.
During my college life I watched approximately 60-70 series (some still on) including anime, comedy, drama, cartoon, fantasy, case files etc. That would be like 600-700 GB. A record I think (Let me know if you have watched more than this).

Best ones are –

1. Prison break (9.5) - Though I have never met anyone who watched it and not liked but if you don’t like this one, well…. I don't know how that is possible. What a Brother can't do?
2. Friends (8.9) - If you don’t like this one, may be you didn’t understand it or hate someone laughing in back ground.
3. Dexter (9.1) - If you don’t like this one, may be because you didn’t have patience.
4. Breaking Bed (8.5) - Same as Dexter.
5. kyleXY (8.1) - I don’t know anyone who did not like this.
6. Big Bang theory (8.4) - You will love it from very first episode.
7. O.C (8.0) - Good drama.
8. House (8.3) - Awesome character of house.
9. Supernatural (7.7) - Got to have patience.
10. Two and half men (8.2) - Charlie sheen :)
11. Jericho (8.0) – Inspiring one.

Don’t watch these series as in long run they seemed to me just waste of time.

1. Lost - You will hate yourself for seeing this. I left it at 6th season and didn’t care about ending it even.
2. How I met you mother - I f****** graduated before finding his mother. And you know what, I don’t care now. Die you. I watched it only for one person and you know who he is.
3. Heros - Not that bad, but just not worth so much watching when there are good series to watch.
4. weeds – You may like/dislike it. Though, ending of season 6 is good.
   

Mass bunking is an illusion. There is always a bastard which will ruin your plan. Doesn’t matter how many IPs come, doesn’t matter how many +1 others do. Don’t depend on it. I have learned it the hard way by missing many pops.

Google everything. If there is one thing I want to tell more than anything, this will be it. My good friend cody told me, I never never took it seriously until last year. Form this habit of googling anything you like or any question you have. Like difference between orange and mousambi, rat and mouse, or any other elementary thing you want to know.
It will make you more curious. You will learn more, adding to your personality. Any problem in coding, writing, first step is to google it. You can live without facebook for a day, preferably for month, I know I did for years now, but if you are programmer you can’t live without googling for a damn day. Make googling things a habit. It is good habit.  
Don’t hold grudges. You will regret your small mindedness. Find a middle ground. Try to understand others, too. Talk it through, if you want that relationship/friendship to work. Most of the fights that I have seen arose not so much by the topic of discussion or point of talk but by the way you speak. i.e., the manner of speaking, the way you convey your thoughts. Expression is important. So talking or replying wrong or rudely or arrogantly is first step to fight. A step you may not get chance to retrace. Another major reason is you bring past things in present discussion even though it has nothing to do with it. So when discussing try to remain focussed on solution of problem and not on mistakes of others made by them in past.

Take pictues. Even if they are as lame as of vacant cafeteria or classroom. They will remind you of your golden period and good memories if you see them after you college. Don’t miss chance of taking pics. Store them somewhere on your hard drive or upload on google+ album collection as they offer unlimited storage for normal pictures. Whenever there is a birth day of your friend or you go out, take pictures from your mobile camera. Do not worry about quality of pics as much. Just take pics because that instance will never ever come back.

No one can fight with 100 persons, unless you are sunny “d/l oel/n” or RAJNIKANT. Well jokes apart, I want to say, make Friends, they are all that you have after you pass out.

When companies like Google, Microsoft, Directi, or any good company come for internship, don’t be lazy. To all those who even don’t apply, come out of mediocre created by yourself, don’t think you will not get in. If you think there is even a one percentage of realistic chance, then go for it. You will never know what you are capable of until you give it a try. You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only option.  

In your life you will find all kinds of crazy people telling all kinds of things, including me, never forget to give such things a thought, but also never take them blindly. One great person rightly said:  “Your life starts when your decisions are 100% yours.”

Do you know what Bill Gates have to say about fail and pass of courses in college. No? Just read, “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.”
“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they  gonna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.”   Will Smith (The pursuit of Happiness, film)

I think these thirty two months of your life will be the shortest and most cherished time and please let me know how you felt while reading it. 

Thanks to Jaley and Raghuvir for helping me with editing and formatting

To be continued :)

Ram ram,

Varun Vyas.