Posts Tagged ‘iit’
Dreaming again
The music is very loud. The crowd is dancing in fun and frenzy. I can’t see much amidst the cigarette smoke, save the belly of my dance partner. What a unique belly button. Not round as all are, somewhat square as one may call it. Unique but stunning. No point hiding it, belly button is what turns me on the most. Suddenly the music has stopped. I can hear some humming. The belly button has moved away becoming round, making the belly flat and black.
Where was I? Oh! Yes, now I remember. Kumar Sirs lecture. Have I been day dreaming again, about yet another belly button? Oh my God! I have been.
“…where ar = The LPC’s of the reference and at will be the LPC of test…”
“What was all this junk”? Professor Kumar is trying his best to explain the concepts to us, but believe you me; I am getting none of it. Not that I am trying to. When I look around all I can see is 50 faces of people from Mars. I try to make a poker face, trying to save my emotions from spilling. Like I have any of them!
The guy sitting on my right, two rows ahead. I don’t know his name. He was one from the masters’ course. Why I or for that matter any of my bachelors’ colleague won’t know his name is a matter that I don’t want to rake up right now, but will take it up later.
So this guy, donning the thinnest nose I have ever seen is moving back and forth; trying to stay awake. What’s that outside the window? At a certain distance, I can see a dupatta, pink in colour. The more I try to focus, the more I can’t. The curtain in the room is trying hard to obstruct my view. No matter. I can still make up for the lost opportunity by using the power of my imagination. Alas! What am I turning into?
Enough of this monkey business. Let’s come back to the class room. Dada bond is sitting in the second row, extreme left, with his bag over his shoulder. Now that we have come to Dada bond, let me tell you why we call him bond. He is one of a kind. I remember during our first year at college when I was trying to grasp the basics of C. I still shiver to think of those days. At that time he used to hack our accounts. A lot of time his mail account was blocked by admin owing to unusual activities. That was the official reason though. Whatever, as usual he is with his bag on and jotting down each and every dot of chalk that Kumar Sir is making on the board. Why is he making all these notes in this last semester? It seems a bit unusual to me, but who cares.
Yes, I forgot to tell you, this is my last semester at college. 8th semester. 4 years have passed. I have always heard that time flows very fast. But it’s only when such moments arrive that you realize the gravity of the statement. It seems just like yesterday, when I first came to college. Now two months hence, I would be leaving all of this for a new place. But all these thoughts can wait, the lecture is important.
“…100 such values/sec will be streaming from source…we have to further do the analysis of the data by cepstral analysis…”
Sorry Pa! I can’t handle this at all. About Professor Kumar himself. He is one of the senior faculty members of CSE dept. Ah yes! I am in Computer Science Dept. This Kumar Sir is also one of a kind. His lecture may fall short of technical details but none that he speaks can be grammatically wrong. It all has to be articulated to the T. Current course, comes under his research interests. Thereby we are being subjected to two hours of agony or as they say double delight.
I am feeling bit like a goose. Coz while writing all this, I have to look once a while at the projector board and nod my head several times to imitate that I am following the lecture.
Well there is this lady in the class, the only one enrolled for this course (I really liked this line “in this course”, like the situation is any better otherwise). Let’s call her Lata. She is sitting just in front of me or better still I came and sat just behind her. She is the only one from Venus in the room.
Oh! Sir might have a hint that I am not following the lecture. Let me nod vigorously.
Back to Lata. I call her lady, coz she seems to be quite elder to us, having enrolled for a PhD. Now that I have come to her, let’s finish it off.
I first saw her in Preetam Sirs class. Preetam Sir, deserves special mention and I will come to him later in detail. I saw her and like we all here are, concentrated more on her than the lecture or the projector board. After these four years at a sex starved college, I am not shy anymore staring the opposite sex, if I see one. This went on for a week till I found out that she was married. Oh! One more of my infatuation breaks.
It’s hard for me to understand how one can continue studies even after marriage. Why deny those sweet moments of cuddling and love for such boring lectures. But I guess that’s my frustration speaking. Gaining knowledge is essence of life and can be done at any point in life. She is married but to still gaze at her like that? Maybe I see her as a ray of hope at the very end of the tunnel.
Interviews@IIT
The placement season is almost over at IIT Guwahati. Most of the batch has been placed and placed well.
I sat for about 5 written tests and was selected for 3 personal interviews. Job interviews are a bit different than what I have had before. They are not of NTSE type or for some scholarship or internship. They are there to define your career. The pressure they bring with them is intense for sure. No matter how cool you are they do affect you. I have seen the coolest guys of my batch jittering before interviews.
First thing first, you have to be good at your subject. No doubt about that. It’s only if you know your subject well, you will be able to qualify for PI (short listed on the basis of written test). Frankly speaking the interviewers, most of them, are not from an IIT (baring a few top notch companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo etc). They also are in awe of us most of the times. Also for most of them its 2nd or 3rd time that they are interviewing someone at IIT (again baring a few who are quite experienced).
What I felt is that the fear of losing out on a good job, often make us under perform. Go in as you have nothing to lose. Those who have done that have succeeded for sure.
Let me cite a few examples to prevent this blog from becoming a boring sermon.
1. A friend of mine was selected for 3rd round of Microsoft (after 2 written rounds). He was given a problem very simple on the face of it. I don’t remember it exactly but it was comparable to a tree traversal problem. He had to write the working code for it (yes they do ask to write working code on the spot, at least Microsoft and Google do). He wrote the code. The interviewer looked at it and asked him to point out the bugs in the same code and report them. He found a couple of them. He was however not selected coz he didn’t write the base case. He knew it all along but thought it would not matter to the interviewer. Plz try not to think what the interviewer would want from you. Instead try to show him what you know.
2. Interviews are there to test what you know and not for testing what you don’t know. Just keep this in mind.
3. Never try and lie in an interview about any question be it tech or HR. Speak the truth, however bitter it may be. Truth needs no backup. Lies do. Interviews are often quite smart to catch your lie and can grill you over it. Any company would prefer a less competent employee to a one who lies). For ex. in the HR round of Lehman they asked me had I written CAT. I told them yes. So what’s the score? I told them I hadn’t checked as I didn’t want to check. I had no plans for an MBA. They further grilled me as to why I had written CAT in first place. I told them there was no reason why not to. Most of you would not have liked my answers but I spoke the truth and fared well.
4. Be straight forward. They asked me again why I don’t want to do an MBA right now. I was fed up and told them why do they want me do an MBA. If they want an MBA then why aren’t they going to an IIM, what are they doing at IIT, in the first place? Don’t be shy to speak your mind. Though I knew that they wanted to be sure, I would not be leaving for an MBA soon.
This blog is becoming quite huge. I will cut it short here. Will write again with some more insights.
TC
Arpit
Yaari Teri: My First Song, Manthan
A song I wrote for Manthan ‘04 or ‘05. With intro from JP.
ArpitGarg's Weblog 