Universities, please improve

By knowledge or luck I secured good rank in AIEEE. I was eligible for NITs and hence started exploring them. Similar exploration was done when my brother secured good rank in IIT-JEE. During these explorations I discovered many unique things about education in few Indian Institutes. I do not remember the name of the institute but first time in my education carrier I saw an institute considering the differences in students.

They provide the option to choose some of your subjects for engineering. Nothing great, even we have elective subject option (though only in final year) in Mumbai University. But the uniqueness was in the grading system. Even we know that all subjects are not of same importance. But our university is blind about it. Even for Computer students Data Structures is of same importance as Electrical Networks. Please can anyone prove this logic????

I found few things which should be included in all universities :

• You can’t just choose few subjects that you would like to study but also decide importance of those subjects. Even I realized it after entering in engineering that even if you could master one subject you could create your carrier in it. Say for example even if you know only web designing you could not only earn your living but you could even start a good business.


• You could study few extra subjects from other branches other than your normal subjects. This will fetch you a MINOR degree of that branch other than a MAJOR of your branch. This could be utilized by students who find that they are interested even in another branch. Above all it is optional and could be utilized only in case you want it.

Seeing such options I really think our university should improve. These are not in-practical things. Nor are you required to present policy in parliament as such options are already present in India. You just need to feel your responsibilities and act for the students. Do not consider us just another bulk of students enrolled to pass engineering. We are here to improve our future. We are here not just for degree but also for knowledge.

So, my dear universities please stop playing with our career and improve. If you cannot give competition to IITs and NITs, try to reach their level (in policies atleast).

Farewell Time

Farewell drastically changed my future plans. I thought when I will start earning I will buy a server first. Till when I should rely on free servers. But then I realized that I am losing my persons who visit my site. I lost my site or I should say I AM LOSING MY IDENTITY.
I always heard my name with website. Whenever website is named it is for our class website. And now I am losing my class and hence website and hence IDENTITY. Now no one will care for a URL in millions.

Most of the people got surprised listening that I started blogging. There is a reason of start writing blog. In 21 years of my life I lost many things for improving in LIFE or should say for improving CARREER. Many times we take a decision which our brain says is correct no matter what our heart says. Many times I wanted to share things with myself. So I thought I should start blogging as no one other than me would come to my blog.

I was born in Narora near Delhi and was there till the age of 16. I had huge collection of friends. We used to play, dance, enter jungles, etc. In short we used to have dhamaal. I know none of you can believe me saying this but I used to be on stage for dance and drama too. Then my father got transferred to Mumbai. Brain said it is great as here carrier opportunities are more and my heart was left aside. It was the biggest loss of my life. That day a different Vaibhav came to Mumbai. A boy who used to be on ground for hours started hating them. In my 10 years in Mumbai I was on ground only for few hours when Charudutt, Amin, Prasad, Daishik, etc came to colony to play cricket.

Losing my friends was a great pain for me. That day I decided never to make friends because like everything else even friends are not permanent in life. I started living with minimum requirements. I am in BARC for 10 years and still without friends except for college friends like Swati and Vibhav.

I was happy to be lonely. I don’t cry for my 10 friends or 12 friends. You can confirm it on Orkut or facebook. Not that I was too bad to be friendly but I kept myself low so that no one approach me for friendship. Even engineering was no different.

In the first year during submissions I was taking printouts of C programs. Leena and Nikita came to me and asked whether I have some program. I replied yeas I have and will give them tomorrow. Leena said we are from D-2, could you come and give us in recesses. I said yes I will. May be she did not believe that I will give them printout so to catch me she asked my class and was shocked to hear the reply D-2.
I am not saying they ignored me but the truth is I made myself ignored. To live in class for 5 hours I required someone to talk. So I used to talk with minimum number of students like Ankit, Anjana, Bhushan, DivyaKumar, Vinay. But these people changed my rules.

I thought I would never feel friendly with anyone but TUMHARI VAJAHSE MUJHE DOSTI KARNI PADI. You were too friendly to resist. Slowly and slowly many joined the group and on farewell day I realized the length of the list. I was shocked to see few people approaching me with a smile and willingness to write something for me. I thought they don’t know me that well to write something for me. But I was wrong. They knew a person who sat with them for 3 or 4 years and want him to be happy.

Now I ask myself why you again made friends. Yes I made a mistake. This time it is even bigger because the attachment is even deeper. I know I entered into VESIT to leave it after 4 years par VESITians ke bare me pata nahi tha. I never knew that you all will be this good. I can’t recollect any face which I would not like to see in future. Some are closer to me some are not but none of you are absent from the list.

I know I irritated you all. The reason was I know nothing more than coding syntaxes. Whenever I wanted to talk to you I had no topic to talk for. So at different occasions I took different topics like chocolates, party, validation, etc. But you goodness was over my irritation. I never heard anything harsh for me in return. I hope I am taking everyone’s name but sorry if missing anyone.

PRASAD
You always get irritated by “SIR” and want to know the reason. I want to know few things from you. Who was the person who said Abe PHP easy hai, mai kar sakta hu to tu to kar hi lega. This was said to a person who did not know anything technical, was rejected by every society because he was useless. That statement may not be important for you, but for me it was a driving force. Next I want to ask you who visited site daily for colour combinations and give suggestions next day. Remember my site with green, yellow and pink backgrounds. May be you don’t but I cannot forget that. Then come to my latest site. Who used to SMS me with the suggestions for improvements? If you are still not convinced then tell me who asked me to learn AJAX for dynamic sites? If there is still problem then tell me my friend who solved my many doubts online by providing appropriate links?
When you could provide me with these answers and ask me not to state you with “SIR”, I will definitely not use it. But if I could use this title for anyone, it could be you. So, thank you.

SURAJ
I think I irritated you the most. But you irritate most to the persons you like most. You used to be very friendly and caring with me. Even you helped me to improve the site but more than that I liked you for your smile. Let it be any time in day. Many times I used to feel exhausted in labs. Then someone puts his hand on my shoulder and says "Kya hua??" Seeing your smile I used to forget my exhaustion. Thank you for noticing that there is a boy sitting in the corner of lab. I am sorry to irritate you provided me with energy.
I am happy that you got your dream job. I would be happy to see the same smiling face in Deloitte but would be happier to see you happy.
Thank you for everything you did to me.

Anjana
Janjana, Jomura, Motorola and what not. I don’t think I spared any occasion to irritate her. She used to help me in first year with program codes for printouts. But I felt the friendship in second year when she approached me for Quant Week. She said "Are Vaibhav tu to pakka jetega, please participate na". She had more confidence in me than myself. The event was from 3 and we were left at 1. She called me many times just to confirm that I am in college. And how can she be wrong. My team won the event and that was my first win in VESIT. This event filled confidence in me. Next occasion was SFMC’s symposium. She gave me realistic news like event will start at 3:30 when other was saying the event will start at 3. When others were waiting in the queue I was nicely seated in canteen. I think they gave us something to drink. I asked her to give me one more. As a society’s loyal member she could not but no one stopped her in giving her drink. She gave me the drink given to her which I realized later.
Even in placement news she helped me. She kept my confidence boosted that in spite being 47 in class, I will get job. I could not believe that and posted my resume on 3-4 job sites. But again she proved me wrong and I got placed in Deloitte. I felt very bad when she was rejected by them. Believe me or not Anjana I was happier than you when you got placed in Nomura. Vibhav was there in coordination and I was sending him SMS in every 30 mins to know the result.
Thank you for helping me. I know it would be difficult but try to remember me for good.

AJINKYA
Mr. Validation worked with me in Alumni website. Like others even he helped me a lot. He used to come next day with that standard Ajinkya smile to say "Kya re Dixit aur koe colour nahi mila kya????" Sorry for stating you with that name but lack of communication with you left me with no option. I can’t remember any other occasion when we interacted so was forced to use that name.
This was not because you worked on certain pages. It was solely because I could not think of any other name. Sorry and thank you for helping me.



List will go on and on as I feel I irritated each and every one of you. I did that solely because of affection. I just tried to make you smile. I do not have anything to make you smile and hence took the leg pulling way. If my jokes hurt you then I am really sorry. Just ignore those moments from your life. Soch lena ek pagal ladka tha jo pareshan karta tha par ab tumhari zindgi se chala gya.

I also thank you all for helping me improve my site. I never had affection with my site but will always have affection for your unbiased ideas to improve it. You all wanted to see an improved site. I never thought that anyone want to make my site degrade. You seem to be happy to see each improvement on my site. I should say thank you for motivating and guiding me throughout my engineering. I feel I will not get such a response in Deloitte or at any other place.
Till date I was with people who helped me to improve and now in profession world I will meet people who would like to go up climbing over my shoulders.

Feeling of losing you all again remind me not to make new friends. Again I want to be in low profile so that I don’t feel pain losing friends in Deloitte. May be I will go somewhere or they will go for studies or another company. Like the start of Engineering I am promising to myself to make friends after thinking a lot and let me see if there are people in Deloitte who can force me to be friendly like you all did.

But, I am thankful to you all for this wonderful journey of ENGINEERING and sorry if I hurt you anytime during this phase.

Google

With this blog I am sure that I don’t require introduction to this topic – “GOOGLE”. As an engineer it has been my best tutor. I am happy that for this I need not provide reasons as no one would go against it. In this blog I am trying to write down my journey with Google.

In the first year Google was just another search engine on the web. I was not even using Gmail as my mailer client. My experience with Google started in full flow with one of the society’s workshop in second year when one of my senior said
“I taught you what I could. From this point onwards try to learn from Google as I have also learned from it. You cannot buy all books and it is easy to search your problem. If you do not understand the error application is throwing, copy and paste the error and you will get your answer.”

This really helped me. Many times I get stuck with some error like ERROR#%$##%#. When you have no clue about what is written just copy and paste this scribbling on Google and trust me you will get the problem. But this thing is also common to other search engine.

Now let me talk about the span on Google which I have realized over a span of time

In the second year, I created my account on Gmail as my Email Id on yahoo was hacked. That time Gmail introduced embedded Gtalk on its website which was I liked very much though it was later also introduced in Yahoo. One more thing which was very useful for me was that if I add a friend in Orkut, he is automatically added in my contacts and chat list. User interfaces of both these web applications are fabulous.

Later in the third year when I started my website, Google provided web development tools to help me publish my website easily. I managed to bring my site from seventh page to the first page of Google for the query “Vaibhav Dixit”.

And then came forth year and the best year of my exploration. Our placement was to start and Google Group was created. The interactions between the people are very nicely displayed on the group’s mail. Later it proved very useful for the completion of our project on Deloitte.

With the Deloitte project I also came across Google Documents. And believe me, I have seen many web applications but no one matched it. Open an excel file and you could see other working on it. If you want to discuss, no problem, go ahead with the embedded chat application. You do not require creating any chat group to discuss on any file. You could restrict the access of these documents.

My last experience was with BLOGSPOT. To register on BlogSpot I just required my Google account details and all my details were imported. This may be possible with other mailer servers also as I have not tried it with other providers like Yahoo, etc.

In general Google helped me right from technically by solving my problem for application or website errors to socially by Orkut and BlogSpot.

If Google was not present, I think 1 engineer would definitely be absent from the society.
Thank You Google :)