It’s about my life so far.

I graduated in 2020 from Assam, India and felt quite empty inside out even though I had decent academic scores to be happy enough. But that was not the scene. I even felt demotivated to sit in the campus placements. I dreamt beyond this. No, it’s nothing about The Great American Dream or a A Fancy Government Job. I dreamt to be someone who can speak confidently about the work I do or the degree I did.

Yes! I missed a lot of college life. I had good academic score, recieved a few scholarships, took part in a lot of cultural activities, was liked by most of the colleages and faculties, yet graduation felt incomplete. No, I absolutely don’t blame anyone. But isn’t it weird that a four year undergraduation degree with a topper grade left me with such emptiness?

Anyways, I am blessed with a very self aware and competitive friend. He too like me had a similar reputation in college however claims to feel the same. I am glad I found someone who feels the same as me (He was my competitor in college as well).. Okay let’s come to the point!

After graduation, I, with my friend secured an internship in a prestigious college of our town.We were assigned a deep learning based project and that’s when my world seemed to turn upside down. I was not getting any clue as how to proceed with that. My resume mentioned I knew python but why am I not able to understand most of the github repos? I was silent. Did I miss on projects? Yes, I did. My friend at the same time stayed calm and handed me the book “Learn Python-The Hard Way by Zed Shaw” to study. Yes, I had to give a fresh start. I studied the book and sometimes he also joined me during my study hours. By January,2021 I gained some confidence but the “Dunning-Kruger Curve” theory bought me back to my senses and reminded me that its just the beginning. I realized the importance of actual skills (not a flowery resume) and the importance of a motivated peer group.

I got a very nice friend circle in my college but somewhere each one of us were equally unaware of the world and our standing.

Fortunately, around the same time I met a very nice and knowledgeble senior who along with my friend were the best peers I could find at this point. The discussions very mostly about the recent trends and research domains. We aimed big. I could not take part in most of the conversations due to my very limited knowledge on the computer science and deep learning domain. There were numerous breakdowns during this period. Everytime I could not help or contribute to the work or even sometimes not able to make sense of the entire four to five hour meet left me upset.

Around the same time I also saw my friend using arch linux full time and he was kind enough to describe me how he managed to set up the entire system from scratch. He would conduct meets with me to show his new arch setup and the utilities he built on top of that. I was astonished to see him grow so much. Though he had a higher standing in this domain when we started but it was quite low compared to the standards we were aiming for and seeing him rise was a great deal of motivation in itself.

What next? Ofcourse, out of utter insecurity or may be motivation I finally switched switched to linux (full time). Seems funny right? I too thought it would definetely be a temporary switch. A girl who couldn’t manage her windows very well (by very well I mean fluent with all the utilities and management) and let alone a arch based linux😂.But guess what I am writing this blog in my arcolinux after six months and now I can I say I am a functional linux user (Apologies to my friend if he is reading this as”functional” means a lot to him).

Coming back to my internship, the internship required me to implement a deep learning task from scratch and here I was stuck with python. But my very positive minded friend was determined that we will do it. He often told me “The journey is as important as you destination” and then what I kept going. Both of us did the Andrew Ng Deep learning specialization with utmost honesty (Its still not over) and now feel quite confident to atleast implement the SOTA papers on the topics we covered so far. We studied about GAN’s from our senior who was working on that domain.

I also started blogging to overcome my fear of publishing writeups. (It’s the same reason - I was not quite good at it). I cleared my github mess.(Again being from a non computer science branch I didnot show much interest to even update the profile during my college). I started becoming active on linkedin and observing the connections and their profiles.I learned a lot from their as well. I am working on personal branding which I observed is one of the most important part of this journey. I also understood my standing in this process. Reading and analysing research papers is another skill I am trying to ace this year.

Today after six months of this transistion, things have started falling into places. Ofcourse, I am no way near to perfection but the emptiness I felt is fading out slowly.I want to start my grad studies with a good mood and knowledge. As I expect good and sound peers, I believe the professors I will be working under during my master’s would also except the same. A rosy resume might get me in even today but since I too aspire to be a kind hearted professor in future, my conscience will never allow me to fool the admission committee and my supervisor about my knowledge and skills until and unless I am myself confident about everything I claim for myself.

I believe by the end of this year, I will be the right candidate for the right supervisor in some part of the world and we shall grow together.