10 things I will miss about Aggieland

Hah! I am not going to make that false promise again. I admit, I never been able to keep up with my blog and I guess I never will. It’s been a semester since I wrote something here. I am done, done with my Masters. Right now, I am in the mood of catching my flight to India and reunite with my family after 17 months. But, just thought I should share what I am gonna miss. Of course, I have lotz of other interesting topics lined up which I guess I will be writing from India.

1) Being a student at Texas A&M

Without any second thoughts, anyone would easily say that the best part of life is being a student. Being a student at Texas A&M makes it even more special. I am gonna miss attending classes, asking questions, inducing debates, slogging for exams, competitions, grading, and everything that I complained about when I was a student How much ever strenuous it is, student life is still THE best

2) Evans & WCL
Nothing can beat studying for exams at WCL or Evans. You are surrounded by people with lots of caffeine slogging at the last minute reminding you that you are not left alone It may sound stupid, but I have a sentiment of doing better in exams when I study at WCL 3rd Floor. Free coffee, hot chocolate and chair massage for students – can it be any better?

3) Aggie Nights and $1 movie at Rudder
Aggie Nights is the best thing I noticed in my first semester. Pizza, Soda, Bowling, Pool, Board Games, and much more – of course, everything is for FREE. They know that students don’t cook on Fridays
The second best thing is $1 movie at Rudder. The sound system sucks, but you cannot really complain when you pay only one buck. It would be great if they start giving pop-corn and coke

4) Aggie Football & Yell Practice
I was not really an American Football enthusiast in last Fall. I hardly seen a full game and always compared it to Soccer and demeaned it. But, the game has really got stuff to entertain which I got to know this Fall. I watched 4 home games and now I am really looking forward to next season. Midnight Yell is something unique to Texas A&M and I still know only few of the yells. Farmers Farmers Fight! Whoop!!

5) ISMA
ISMA is undoubtedly the best student organization at Texas A&M. While my class with 90% Indian students never gave me the international experience I was seeking, ISMA did. Now I have friends from France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Estonia, Mexico, Serbia, Azerbaijan, West Indies, England, China, Taiwan, and many more countries. I strongly recommend ISMA if you want to make friends and have fun
6) AITP
If ISMA is for fun, AITP is probably the best professional organization in our school. Being the president of AITP taught me so many good things which otherwise I wouldn’t have learned. Especially delegating work to team members and getting it done on time. Man! I used to suck at that. Of course, there was couple of instances in which I was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, it was great.

7) Aggie Traditions
From saying ‘Howdy!’, ‘Gig’em’, and BTHO to Yell Practice,Ring Dunk, Silver Taps, and Elephant Walk, Texas A&M has got its share of unique traditions which are blended into our life. I am surely gonna miss these. I hope I have my ring dunk party next semester in Aggieland (but I will dunk only in Coke ).

8) North Gate
I am not a party animal and in fact, I visited North Gate for the first time only this Fall. North Gate is definitely fun, especially if you have had a rough week and want to forget the woes by shaking your legs. North Gate has influenced me to listen to English songs (Yep! I never listened to any English songs until like 2 months back). I am just sad that I did not get enough chances to go to North Gate of late but I can always drive back from Houston whenever I want to

9) Rec
I still remember many of my friends pulling my legs about working out in rec. I don’t really know whether I achieved my objective of putting weight, but believe me, rec is such a great stress buster. Especially when you have too much of work and your concentration is oscillating, rec can definitely be a rescue. Just flex your muscles, do some weights, and you will feel better. At least, I did.

10) Fellow Aggies
You may confront me saying some of the things listed above are not anything unique to Aggieland and almost any town/city in US would have them. I agree! But, the real flavor here is the Aggies who are present in all the things listed above. I lived in Houston for about 3 months and believe me, Houston is such a barren land (I hope you get what I am talking about). I am gonna miss you all Aggies!

When I wrote this post, I just felt like DJ of RDB (Rang De Basanti – a Hindi movie). If you don’t get what I am talking about:

Its over! Its over!! Its over!!!

I wanted to get out on the streets and shout this like Janagaraj did in Agni Natchathram. Man! Its one of the craziest semester I have ever had…its even more pressuring than my final semester in Undergrad in which I had 6 courses along with a large project…if I have to convey the enormity of the semester in Vijayakanth’s style, here it goes:

I had 4 heavyweight courses, 6 presentations, 10 reports,  26 case studies, 25 homework assignments, numerous articles, 1 really big data warehouse and BI implementation, 2 mid terms, 2 final exams, and 2 Herculean final take home exams. In short, it is close to 500 pages of written content and 154080 minutes of ordeal which has finally come to an end today …whether I was successful or not will be known in a few days…

Now you would have understood why I wasn’t able to post frequently in the past few months. I hope I get back my momentum and come up with interesting topics….

Success is counted sweetest…

There is this poem by Emily Dickinson which goes like:

“Success is counted sweetest 

By those who ne’er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar 

Requires sorest need.”

If I remember correctly, I read and understood this poem in my 9th standard. But, I realize the meaning only today. My life was as smooth as a high way in United States when I was in India. It has become an Indian road after I came here to United States. Part of that is due to the high expectations that I had for myself. As always, ‘expectations bring sorrow and surprises bring joy’. I faced several failures after coming to US. They were extremely painful as I am not used to failures in my life. Right from my 1st standard to my college, I always got what I wanted. I got my job without even knowing the value of it. I got an onsite at right time and life was peaceful. 

But, only when you face failures, you realize the value of success. My failures were in getting an internship for this summer (which will potentially get converted to a full time job in most cases). I interviewed with couple of firms, went on to second round but ultimately got a reject. I was clueless on what went wrong as in both instances I did my best. But, God is great. He was having something big in store for me. Last week, I had an interview with Deloitte, one of the leading consulting firms. It was a tough day as we had 2 rounds (4 interviews) on the same day. I cleared the first round in the morning and was called up for 2nd round in the afternoon. I did OK in the 2nd round. But, you never know how the interviewer interprets it and the relative performance with fellow interviewees. 

Ultimately, I got an offer from them today …I am excited, not only because I got an internship, but also because I got one of the best roles I can get…Now, I understand the joy ‘success’ can bring in, after a couple of failures…I must say I am lucky…after all, luck is when opportunity meets preparation, isn’t it?

A black Monday and a green(?) Tuesday

This is something which I wanted to write when I attended my first career fair 4 months ago, but then stalled the idea as I was not exactly sure of how the system works here. Now, after attending my 4th career fair today (after a day in which US lost 71,400 jobs), I feel educated enough to write a post on career fairs and the current situation.

Coming to the point, beginning student life again after 4 years of a high paying job is not that easy. Initially you might be enjoying the feeling of being back to the student life but then when you realize that you are ‘actually’ jobless and need to get one, the pressure builds up. Career Fairs will most probably be the first opportunity for many students here to meet potential employers. In every career fair (be it engineering, retail, business, geoscience, etc, etc) you can see Indian students dressed up in suits with a folder in hand carrying bunch of resumes visiting almost every stall. By the end of the day, it hurts when many end up with lot of goodies in hand but not even one promising offer (especially International students).

In fact, I was wondering about how changed I am, for good! I never bothered about a job during my undergrad in India. I was told by one of my friends that TCS is visiting our campus in a week. I just casually prepared and some how made it (Believe me, my confidence with English was extremely low that time compared to now). But then, the competition here with a gloomy market makes you really worry about securing a job and makes you more mature and better prepared. Good thing is that, the job market is dry but still not dire, which was evident from today’s career fair (and the word green has been added to the title to denote that). So, there are opportunities out here and there and it entails lot of efforts to land in one of them. At times, it might make you regret on the decision to leave a job and do higher studies. But, if you are lucky (seriously, that is what is needed with this market), you might get good opportunities too.

I had a very tiring day today having three 1:15 hour classes (I bunked one of them) and a whole day with potential (?) employers at the career fair repeating almost the same dialogs with each of them and handing over my resume. As a resolution, I decided not to collect any goodie this time and I never did I wrote this post not to educate any one on career fairs but to advise those aspirants of Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 from India to reconsider their decisions. A couple of days back, I got a chance to talk with the CIO of AMD. The first question he asked me was ‘So, are you planning to take another course here once you are done?’. Thats the kind of confidence he has on this market. Even if there are some improvements, I don’t expect any miracles within a year. So, its better safe to play a wait and watch game rather than getting into the quagmire like us. Be happy with your current job

Transforming into an Aggie…

I am posting after a looong time, I am posting from the land of opportunities…Though my 24.5 hours flight from Singapore to Houston has dropped me on time, I landed like a wrecked ship…my body pain added with the jet lag kept me point blank for nearly a week…

My first impression with US, hmm, rather I would say with College Station (aka Aggie Land) is not so encouraging…may be, my expectation should have been slightly less and I should have been better prepared to face this…I knew that US runs by virtual money (Credit) and badly lacks public transport, but never thought it would be this worse…since it is summer holidays here, the university’s transport system also runs less frequently…under Texan hot sun (temperatures go upto 41-42), I had to walk miles between various buildings of the university…and you imagine how it would be with a fatigued body and mind…

Without a car life is miserable here…even to buy a toilet issue you have to drive 4 miles out of the city…Fortunately, we got some Americans who had cars and who gave us rides to various places which kept us going…but, not everyone is fortunate like us…I had seen students carrying loads of walmart bags and walking for miles…its so pathetic not having a minimum public transport here…not even taxis…anyways, car is the lifeline here…and as a student, one is not affordable to buy and maintain here…as time passes by, we all will get used to like our seniors did…

the university is one of the oldest (1876) and one of the most reputed…there’s a big difference between how universities run in India and in US…may be, I can write a separate, detailed post on that…here they value their brand a lot and invest a lot in maintaining the image…there’s a healthy competition between the universities and things are done purely based on merit…I had a series of orientations for 2 weeks explaining various things about the university and the rules…its all over and my classes are starting from tomorrow…with 12 hours of class room sessions and 20 hours of part time work at the university, I might become really busy from tomorrow…

As I said already, this place is called Aggie land and all the students are Aggies…we have a code of conduct and rules for Aggies…and there are lot of traditions and culture which I need to learn and be a part of…so as of now, I am on a transformation becoming an Aggie…

Thats what all I have now…may be I will fix a schedule for blogging and try to be more frequent…keep checking this space as lot of interesting things are lined up to be shared…