My grandfather has always been a curious man — full of questions about the mysteries of life. Since he was responsible for my tutoring, he encouraged me to question everything too. As a result, I was an inquisitive child, turning to him for every answer, and then to Google after I grew up. Unlike most kids, my learning didn’t happen in the usual ways too. I remember once when I was playing with a ball, and my grandfather started asking me questions such as ‘why did the ball roll back?’, ‘your push was forward, so why did the ball change direction?’ and so on. He used that moment to teach me the physics of bounce in layman terms. Another time, he used a broken glass frame to explain the distribution of particles.
His ways of teaching made me inquisitive — and that led me to study electronics for my graduation. I was fascinated with how the binary controlled the world of electronics and I wanted to learn more about it. It wasn’t until I saw my friend build a tic tac toe game, that I got interested in coding. I started developing web applications — PHP, Node.js — and there was no turning back for me. While all this was fun, I realised that I needed the knowledge of basics. As an electronics student, I had skipped the most important part — data structures and algorithms, and that was a big hurdle.
However, what really pushed me to learn the basics was the fact that companies asked for this in interviews. I spent 6 months learning and practicing through YouTube videos and HackerRank, and got better at algorithms and problem solving, but it was all very unstructured. At times, everything felt so confusing that I wanted to just give up. But in my 5th semester, I got an internship opportunity at Bosch and Siemens as a software developer. It got me into the regular practice of coding, but there were gaps in my knowledge. A couple of months later, I got to know about Scaler Academy through a friend who had enrolled into the course. I decided to give it a try and cracked the entrance test.
The next six months were fantastic. Having been tutored by my grandfather, I had experienced a high standing of learning. Unfortunately, not every educational institute could come close to it, but Scaler Academy did. The concepts, the logic, the knowledge that was being imparted here — it was so intensive and exhaustive. The very first session of my course was conducted by Anshuman sir. He was discussing problems that felt way out of my league — I could grasp a little, but I wasn’t able to think or find the approaches that he was teaching. The first session itself gave me an insight of how much I could learn here.
But with my internship job and the classes, my schedule became too much to handle. I could barely make time to watch the lectures, forget solving the problems regularly. I could have chosen to give up and focus on my work, but the lectures were so interesting, that they kept me going. I always made sure to keep up to date with the class timelines, watch all the lectures and even make notes. Topics that I already knew were taught so well, that I felt like I was learning something entirely new. There was so much to learn, and with such excellent instructors, I looked forward to the lectures. Pragya sir’s classes were my favorite — the way he explained trees and graphs was exceptional. It’s rare to find teachers who can teach you something new about a topic you are already well versed with, and the passion of the instructors here shows in their teaching.
Another experience worth mentioning was the Scaler Hackathon. My project for the Hackathon was Auto Schedy — an app about automatic scheduling — and even though I could only make it halfway through, it was a valuable experience. I was good at web development, so I didn’t have many technical challenges. But I was struggling with the coding basics — dividing the components, writing the algorithm — so I received a lot of help from my mentor, Akash, and all my instructors.
What made the Scaler Hackathon truly unique was their understanding that the students don’t know everything, so everyone from the Academy — the mentors, the instructors, the TAs — was there to support and guide us. We could directly approach anyone and get help. Unlike other Hackathons, the Scaler Hackathon didn’t focus on building the product, but on learning while building and this approach made the entire event fun as well as rewarding.
Before completing the course, I got a job referral at ConverseNow.Ai. I was nervous because I hadn’t been able to solve all the problems due to my hectic schedule. But I had been very regular with the lectures, so before the interview, I rewatched all the lectures twice and went through all the notes that I had prepared. I hoped that it would suffice, and much to my surprise, it did. Even though the questions asked in the interview were different, the ideology was the same that I had learnt in my lectures.
I am incredibly grateful to everyone at Scaler Academy who made my journey so momentous. My mentor from Uber, Akshay sir, my Student Success Manager, Preeti Ma’am, the instructors, were all incredible and very approachable. They were always there to pick me up and motivate me to do my best. The entire team at Scaler is so passionate about what they do, that it’s impossible not to feel the same passion within you.
All my adult life, I had wanted to become a web developer, but after completing my course with Scaler, my dreams changed. My goal now is to be the best programmer, someone who can solve problems, and use their skills to make things easier and better for others. And the training I have received at Scaler Academy has already put me on that path. It has helped me change my approach of finding the best solution to a problem in one go. I have learnt that it’s more important to find the approach, and then optimise it. Today I can say that I am a better problem solver, not just at work, but in every other aspect of my life too!