Firsts are always special and I sure had a lot of my firsts in the tech field with Scaler.
I have always taken inspiration and guidance from people I have come across in this field. Even before coming to the engineering field, I used to look up to different people for guidance regarding career-related prospects. As a child, my first source of inspiration for coming to this field was my aunt, who was also a software engineer. She used to share her experiences with me and looking at her passion for the field, I knew I wanted to follow in her footsteps.
I have picked up a few important lessons from other professionals as well. My mentor in my previous job at MakeMyTrip taught me a lot. He used to perform heavy coding and I learned from his experiences that in this profession you have to be diligent enough to get things done, no matter how challenging it gets. At the same time, I learned the importance of maintaining a work-life balance from another individual.
I think my habit of grabbing every opportunity for learning and taking guidance began when I was in my graduation where these were absent. I graduated in 2019 from NIT, Goa. While my learning experience was great, good companies hardly ever go to Goa for placements. Besides, the total strength of students in our batch was just 25. This further nullified any chances of expecting good companies.
Hard work and guidance got me through these times. More importantly, it was my patience that helped me survive in this field during the times when I was so low on confidence that giving up seemed like the best option. While we are talking about confidence, let me tell you I was very low on confidence after college. When you are not able to solve problems as easily as others, self-doubt has a natural way of creeping in. This is where my mentor during Scaler’s course-Ms. Himani helped me enormously. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself at all. I think it was her confidence that instilled in me self-confidence which I still carry with me.
It was after I received this kind of confidence that I could do well at Scaler. Online lectures used to be for 1-2 hours followed by TA sessions for 2 hours and finally 2-3 hours of self-practice. Since I had joined the course during my vacations, I could give 7-8 hours initially. This was very important as giving so many hours allowed me to do as many problems as I could.
Apart from this, you know how they say- “Firsts are always special”. I had a lot of my firsts in the tech field with Scaler. It was the first time that I received a community of tech people that I could interact with. In fact, my first web development project was also during this time. I usually preferred to work on the backend but during this project, I worked on the frontend for the first time and liked it. Then there were topics like LLD and HLD that I learned for the first time during this course. I also got to lead conversations and technical planning. So yes, I did have a lot of my firsts in this field during my time at Scaler.
Throughout these ups and downs, I have learned that the more you interact with this field and people in this field, the more you learn. On that note, my recommendation would be to hang on to your patience and never shy away from seeking guidance from other people.
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