The GAME begins now! ~~An absolute whopper!!~~
Well, there's apparently more to it than i originally thought.Things didn't change after that extra coffee from starbucks and early morning 6am walks. There's more to be done and i am starting to lose confidence (having already lost normal sleep(what is sleep??)normal food, parties, weekend stuff!!).Life's becoming harder even as well i face it with increased will and confidence(courtesy: Lumsdaine?? May be!!).I dont know what to call this part of life. May be, this part of life is called 'bloody-fucked-up-downward-going-spiral'ness. Its dang, eating away all my confidence levels.
I talk to people , people and more people about my plight and all they say is "It takes some time.Hang in there".Can anyone believe if i say the people i talked to include taxi-drivers to team-leads to friends to parents to absolute strangers? I dont get a clue of how long its going to take as the semester is already halfway through and it starts to get depressing.
The more i spend, the less i get and the more i think, i let it go.
Life's much more than what i thought. Its all about how well you handle the peer pressure and make your progress along.How well you manage all aspects of your life if life knocks you down on certain aspect and you to try to bounce back not realizing its going to knock you down even harder this time.Life's not fair man!! Atleast not for me.Atleast not now.
I am probably thinking too much as some say,but??, yeah, may be they're right!
The only thing that pisses me off is you work hard and when you dont get the deserved outcome.You know what i am saying?? Exactly.
I am hoping for things to change and for the better. HOPE and PATIENCE, as i can see now, are the greatest tests of character of a person. You dont have them and you are missing something buddy!!Learn to get some HOPE and PATIENCE. You gotta survive. Life's just giving you a hard time. Take it easy. It pays off. Every moment of what you learn pays off later and you are gonna smile back at these moments. Dont think too much! Talk to people and more people.Yeah this is what i say to myself . Lets see. If things really change , i would describe another blog on how they changed? They gotta change Damn it!! It cannot continue to be like this.
I dont know if any of this rambling makes sense since i am writing this after a really fucked up night(Its 5:05 in the morning!) working to solve a problem to an unknown solution( Working out equation for finding what mass should it be to escape from a blackhole..shall we say something like that??)
A less confident Deepak.
Indiana University Bloomington
The place grows on your feelings everyday.There have been days initially when i cursed the place and couldn't justify my arrival to IU for doing masters.But then, things changed for the better and now i feel my life cant get any better.I am currently on one of the steepest (going upward)learning curves of my life.There are so many things to learn that i often fall short of time and rethink my time management strategies. There's so much happening around this place from Research to Parties to Culture fusion and beyond.I think i came up close to the meaning of "Bigger Definition of Life" The first one month or so has been tough and the first two weeks even tougher.They were those days filled with questions that had subtle answers, enthusiasm replaced with anxiety and thoughts to road of eternity infused with many detours.Tough days, i would say as i recall them.Things started to change day by day and i began to feel better and understand the system better.Then, i got a job which left me unbounded with joy, for short though. The semester started and the course choice was a hard decision. I literally asked every senior i ran into about the successful combination of courses for a freshman graduate. By successful, i mean courses which fetch me a GPA > 3.6 at the end of the day and also courses in which there is a lot to learn, not the 'no-brainer' types.So, it was a tough call and i ended up taking Advanced Operating Systems along with Advanced Computer Graphics and Applied Java Design Patterns , the combination which would frown even the 'Dudes'(Phd Graduates) at IU. I had mixed feelings about the course choice, joyous at one end taking tough courses and gullible at the other end thinking if would ever be able to manage both my courses and job.At that instant, I had no idea of how the job looks like.
Much to the worst of my fears, the semester has begun and already started taking a toll on me from the very first week and forced me drop two courses in succession ( Software Engineering replacing Applied Java Design Patterns and Data and Search Informatics replacing SE).The second week was very demanding on the job front. I was thrown at a Content Management System(No idea earlier) without training and was asked to tweak it.I had second thoughts about completing my masters successfully and in the way that i intended it to be.
Operating Systems was kind of manageable until the first assignment was out in which we were asked to design a shell for Linux.I started to feel the heat. More sleepless nights figuring out what execvp() is and what fork() is and what System Calls are and What the Fuck is going on in life?
Job has not been any simpler making me learn new technologies like XML, XSLT and javascript. Graphics has been no smoother either making me slog at OpenGL smidgens.I started to believe that you can only learn when your patience levels are pushed to the maximum.That extra coffee at 1am from starbucks, that extra 2$ vitamin water, and that early morning 6-am-back-to-home walks made things easier and made a difference.
Things started to make some sense and i started to feel better.The course load remained the same ,but the whole perspective of looking at it differed.The baseline is Life is tough in Masters and the tough i am talking about has very fruitful consequences once you learn the art of conquering it. This tough aint the tough in 'tough life of people living in somalia' or 'tough life of World war victims' or even the 'tough life of Ike survivors'.
Surviving Grad School.IU rocks.
Deepak Konidena.
Been working on this site during the whatever little time i get off my studies.Its still under construction.
https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~bkoniden
Montgomery County.
72 hrs its been since i landed into US. This place where im staying is called "Montgomery County". One thing is definitely sure about US: here everything is organised - the Roadways, the Subways, the Parking lots, the Restaurants and everything else you can possibly conceive of. Sitting on a bench in front of the public library, here i am blogging rant-and-rave about an ambience about 10000 miles away from India. I am currently connected to a public wi-fi provided by the library. The Library is huge and is beautifully constructed and i am hearing this lady who's blurting out something in spanish(likely!) on a payphone few yards away from me.
Arrived here at 0930AM. Tried my hand at the Library's entrance door for almost 5min, only to later find a signboard that read " Mondays: 10AM to 9PM ".Seemingly the difference between US Indians and Indians is that US Indians are a little more work-dedicated , and more of it.Three days in the townhouse singly altogether was a different feeling.Alright you are given unlimited access to TV , Internet and Foodstuff ..but hey the flipside is that the only other person with whom you can possibly share your feelings is "YOU: your alter ego."
Been to Subway,Chipotle and Madras Palace for lunch on three different days. Then , been to starbucks for some Cappuccino Mocha.I liked Burrito(from Chipotle) the most of all. Its apparently a westernized Frankie.Go 11 min and i can lay my hands on some of the books in the Library.Its still closed.Damn. It rained twice here : though only for a short while. And the weather , i must say is moderate enough compared to that in India.I find a lotta Mexicans, Chinese, Indians and African Americans in this place. Flipping over the TV channels has been my favorite pastime all these days.Comedy Central aired some good stuff.
Okay, and i have a chat right here right now with this African American while i am blogging. He sits on the bench , wishes me (another good thing about the guys here is they wish u b4 they start a conversation..something like "Hey , whats up?" "How are u doing?" which you rarely find in India) and asks if i remember him , coz supposedly he met some guy who was my look-alike and he had helped him the other day.I told him that i was new to the Library and was a firsttimer.Then,we had some chat on Population issues in India, How Indians are good at IT ? and other stuff. Quite a chat! .The good thing is that i could understand his accent well.Coz, i usually find the African American accent a little fast, loud and hazy.( as in Hip-Hop and Rap songs).
Entered the library.Searched for a power outlet for my Laptop. Found it at some corner way inside the Library. And finally , Here i am. Alright i will go explore the Library and find some good book to read.
Chao.
©Deepak Konidena. 2009.
