The biggest dilemma which I faced during later stages of Engineering days was that I was not sure whether I really wanted to continue with Civil. The core civil engineering subjects never created any passion in me. But still I thought I should give Civil Engineering a chance and joined post graduation. In post graduation, it was all about structural concepts and mathematics. To use these concepts, you need to work with really big firm. There was no point in completing post graduation and working with firm which deals with routine concrete buildings and still plants. But this is what I was doing for 7-8 months after my post graduation. I was seeing the benefits of my brother's advice of completing the graduation from engineering college as I never experienced difficulty in getting jobs with good civil engineering firms. But was I enjoying my job? The answer was no without any doubt. But still I was never able to make decision on my own to quit civil engineering field. The pressure of settling down with job and eventually getting married was started building up.
But there were series of activities including tough times faced by Chemtex during 1997 south - east Asia economy crash and then my joining Mahindra Acres. Mahindra Acres was third firm which I had joined in last 8 months. Again as I was not enjoying my job, I received call from my friend with whom I had spoken with for months. At the end of conversation, it casually mentioned about Syntel looking for post graduate from any branch. Without thinking twice I went for its interview and got selected. Without knowing anything about IT industry, I was about to join it.
At the beginning of your career, you can take few risks as your responsibilities are lesser. There will be decisions in your life which you take without being able to justify them but then at times you have to go by your heart. There is major part of your life which you end up living trying to meet expectations from society but there is that smaller part of your life which you have lived listening to your heart. It is this part of life which will give you satisfaction when you sit back on an evening during later stages of life and rewind into journey of your life till date.

Congratulations to Sachin on becoming first man in the universe to score the double century in one dayers!
Coming back to my Engineering days, about the things which I think I could have done better.
For most of us in our Civil Engineering class, it was more of forced choice than a desired choice. I found myself with group of guys who were simple and not much ambitious. And for some unknown reasons I was occupied some negative thoughts during this period. The thoughts revolved around temporary nature of all our achievements and the fact that all wealth which create during our lifetime has no meaning beyond our life. That resulted in me losing focus on studies and eventual loss of confidence to certain extent. During such moments you try to my console in something in which people appreciate your skills. For my surprise, I found cricket giving me that support. I became regular opening batsman (with tennis ball) for our class and SPCE hostel. I went through this phase for most period of my engineering. It took some effort after graduation on my part to be on track.
Every experience has even probability of being positive or negative. Our state of mind is like pendulum. Positive experience can push you to right direction and negative experience can push you to wrong direction. But if you are mentally strong then you can keep you mental state in balanced position irrespective of experiences you are going through.
There is another aspect of Engineering studies. You need to discuss the concepts which help you understand them in much better ways than going through the books. Needless to say the discussion needs to be with right set of people! Will be back soon...Aditya

One of the most important decisions which we make in our life is selection of our professional career. Ideally a detailed thought process needs to have gone through before we arrive at our choice. But in most of the cases this decision is made with some other factors influencing it. And these factors has nothing to do with the actual liking of the person involved. Let me illustrate this with my own example.
I am a numbers man. I like numbers and like to involve in statistics of any data. But it took me long time to realize this factor. How long? Till I almost completed post graduation in civil engineering! And what were factors which made me join civil engineering? My elder brother was not happy with his private engineering college and my parents were not ready to send me outstation for studies. As a result my scope was restricted to government engineering colleges in Mumbai. And with my PCM score of 281, I managed Civil Engineering in SPCE.
The important lesson to learn is that one need to put some efforts to identify a suitable career for him / her. The professional curriculum is different from the one till 12th standard. One needs to have real interest in the subject to succeed. Otherwise you end up being counted as 'also - ran'.
In my next blog I will cover my experiences in Engineering college and things which I could have done in better ways.

Junior College Days

The biggest challenge which we might face while analyzing ourself is to admit our own faults / weaknesses. But ideally you are in best position to identify your weaknesses. I will try to explain this with my own examples. When I joined junior college in Ruparel, every student in class was a topper from his / her school. I was used to all attention from school days. And then when results of first unit test came in, I found myself ranked somewhere around 10-15 th position in class of 60. This was altogether a new experience for me. What I failed to understand at that point was it was ok to stand at that position in the class as long as you maintain your percentages. I took a while to understand this and then bounced back. One of the reasons which took me long to understand this was my nature. I was bit reserved person during my school days which I continued for a while in my college life. While I could manage things with my reserved nature in school day, in college life you need to more interactive with your colleagues. A 10 minutes discussion can help you understand the concepts in much better way as compared to reading book for 3 hours. The important factor is you should be doing this discussion with right set of people.

To summarize above, my limitations during junior college days were reserved nature and inability to identify new environment setup as quickly as possible.

It changed soon in 12th standard when I moved to Ruparel college Hostel. I came in contact with nice guys and then soon set my target for PCM score. Now I can term this setting up goal which will help you in staying focussed on area of interest. I ignored couple of topic in biology and ended up not answering this questions in HSC examinations. For me this was a bold decision considering my earlier history. But it helped me in concentrating my efforts in PCM.

In my subsequent post I will cover my engineering days and things during those days which I could have done in better ways. I know I am writing on serious things at this moment. I promise I will return to lighter topics later on. Request you guys also to chip in. Thanks - Aditya

Knowing Yourself

There are many topics on which I intend to share my views with all you guys. It would be really interesting if you guys can share your thoughts with me on these topics.

Today's topic is about knowing yourself as an individual. Do we know ourselves very well? What are our strengths and weeknesses? What are things which makes us happy / sad? Whether we are really emotionally strong or whether we need help in this matter? Our previous generation didn't have to worry about this as they were not put in this much competitive environment. But for us these factors are important. It can so happen that with small help in any of these areas we can bring significant improvement in our overall experience.

There are various parameters on which we need to analyze ourselves. INTROSPECTION - This is the mantra for today. What are the techniques for the same? Well first one is our ability to look at ourselves from 10 metres away. This concept is difficult to understand and explain. I will be talking about it in detail in next post!

Hi

Hi,
This blog is for all batch mets of NES Vasai 1988 batch. So please do visit on this blogs and share your thooughts.