Vinay Ramakrishna's Blog
November 24, 2015
Introduction Continued!
In my introduction video, I ended my talk by saying - "Follow your instincts". But how does it feel to follow your instincts? Well, let me share a few of my reflections today.
Walking on the path of instincts is exciting and exhilarating, filled with the unknown and apprehension, and sometimes annoying and lonely. You are constantly posed with the question of where you are heading. But at the end of the day, it is so much fun because you are pursuing what you really want to do.
Everyone has already got a raw deal of just one life when she/he arrived on this planet. That way don't you think, angry birds and candy crush are much better with multiple lives? I asked myself why stick to another raw deal with just one profession throughout life? So, with that thought ingrained in my mind, I chose the first station in my journey of life as Writing. But is it my destination? I still don't know.
I have been writing for the last three years and it is time that I shared some of them with you all.
Starting next week, I will have a series "Shots of Mocktales" going where I will be sharing short stories on a regular basis.
Let the show begin Ladies and Gentlemen. Stay tuned.
Walking on the path of instincts is exciting and exhilarating, filled with the unknown and apprehension, and sometimes annoying and lonely. You are constantly posed with the question of where you are heading. But at the end of the day, it is so much fun because you are pursuing what you really want to do.
Everyone has already got a raw deal of just one life when she/he arrived on this planet. That way don't you think, angry birds and candy crush are much better with multiple lives? I asked myself why stick to another raw deal with just one profession throughout life? So, with that thought ingrained in my mind, I chose the first station in my journey of life as Writing. But is it my destination? I still don't know.
I have been writing for the last three years and it is time that I shared some of them with you all.
Starting next week, I will have a series "Shots of Mocktales" going where I will be sharing short stories on a regular basis.
Let the show begin Ladies and Gentlemen. Stay tuned.
Namaste
Good evening folks,
The polite (which co-incidentally happens to be my first name) way to start is by introducing myself here. Below is a short video that captures my journey so far, accurately despite having been made last year. For those who prefer reading, I have also included the transcript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWRAO...
I am Vinay Ramakrishna. Today, I am going to introduce myself to you all. Let me split my 29 years of life into 3 phases.
My first phase, I call it Bliss. This phase is from the beginning of my life until the end of my school – i.e. 10th standard. The reason I call this phase of mine bliss is because I had very few responsibilities on my shoulders. This phase consisted mostly of assignments, exams once a year and the rest of the time was only fun. If you think about it, this is the best part of anybody's life. The irony of life is that it is long gone before you even realize and enjoy it fully. If given an opportunity, I do want to go back to that phase of bliss again. That’s about my first phase.
My second phase of life, I call it Confusion. This is from the beginning of PUC i.e. after 10th standard.
Until 10th standard, you have more or less a set syllabus and you don’t have too many options to pick from other than CBSE, ISCE and the state board. But when you come to PUC, you are bombarded with options and that’s where my confusion started. Then somehow I picked a stream and moved into my PUC. But if you look at the options and the confusion here - you are not allowed to pick a stream, try it out for a few months and if you don’t like it then change to some other stream. That way, softwares are much better as they have a trial option.
After PUC, my confusion started to build again. It was even more serious because there are lot more options when you get to engineering. So, we live in a society where our dad decides what we wear, our mom decides what we eat and our neighbor decides what we do in life. Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened to me. Still I ended up in computer science and I joined BMSCE, even though I was totally confused about what to do in life.
So, how did I resolve this confusion? What did I do? I had this thought in mind from the beginning that if I was in confusion, I will just follow my friends. I did exactly that. Everyone started saying, engineering in Computer science or Electronics. Eventually, I ended in Computer science.
Four years at BMS was bliss. It was like the first phase of my life all over again. It was really good. In the final semester, confusion started to creep in again. It was about what to do next in my life. That was the biggest question. So, again I followed my friends. Some of them decided to write CAT and joined the CAT course. I followed and I joined the CAT course. I lost interest within the first month and eventually I didn’t even write the CAT exam. So, what next? Some of my friends said they were planning for GRE and they wrote the GRE exam. I thought, why not? Let me take the GRE and go abroad for higher studies. I followed them and wrote the GRE exam. I got admits from a few universities but I was not ready to go at that time. So, I worked for one year at Ittiam Systems. Then I got an admit from CMU and I went there. This was my second phase, which was all about confusion and following my friends to wherever they went.
The third phase of my life, I call it Reality. There is a saying – When Reality hits you, it hits you real bad. Sometimes, it hits you multiple times.
I was at CMU and I started wondering what I was doing there. I had paid a huge amount as tuition fees and I remember thinking that this was not the dish I ordered. I had lot of confusion in my mind at that time. I had lot of questions - unanswered questions. What I was doing here? What I wanted to do in my life? What should I pursue ahead? It had become similar to the Jackie Chan movie – Who Am I? I was 24 years old and I didn’t know who I really was. It was a terrible state actually.
I thought let me address some of my questions. How did I address these? I did two things. One, I stopped following my friends. The other thing I did was, I didn’t pick anything that didn’t interest me, and that included even my courses.
Coming back to what I was doing before – i.e. following my friends. Can I blame them? Because of them I landed in different places that weren’t for me. If given an opportunity again, I would have taken Architecture as my specialization during my engineering days. When I was 18 years old, I didn’t even take any architecture exam. I still feel 18 years is too early for someone to decide his or her career.
I can’t blame my friends because they knew their goals, they followed their dreams and they are where they are. Where as in my case, I didn’t know what to do. I followed my friends and I was in the wrong location every time because of whatever I selected.
I finished my masters with customized courses. I had learnt that I shouldn’t take courses which didn’t interest me.
Eventually, I got into three companies and two of them didn’t offer to sponsor my work visa. Only one was left and I joined that company. I worked for a couple of months. I didn’t like the work that I was doing there because it was more or less similar to what I was doing before I left for masters. I didn’t really see any reason to continue there. I could have easily switched jobs to a different company and gone to a different location in US. But I had slowly learnt that I shouldn’t be doing anything that didn’t interest me.
So, I left the country and came back to Bangalore. I joined Juniper Networks and worked there for one year. I realized that working in a big company, you won’t get that exposure and you won’t have lot of responsibilities. That’s when Agile 3 folks were looking for people here in Bangalore and I joined the company.
Coming to the end of the speech. So, how different am I now compared to what I was 24 years old? One thing I have learnt is to not follow anyone. The other thing I have learnt, is I will only pick something if I am really interested in. Do I know my destination? Where am I going? I don’t know where my destination is. One of my friends said that if you know your destination beforehand then you run towards it and after that what will you do? So, it is mainly about the journey and not as much about the destination. From that day forward, I have started to enjoy my journey of life and hopefully I will reach my destination someday.
Moral of my story – Don’t follow others. Be yourself and follow your instincts!
To be continued…
The polite (which co-incidentally happens to be my first name) way to start is by introducing myself here. Below is a short video that captures my journey so far, accurately despite having been made last year. For those who prefer reading, I have also included the transcript.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWRAO...
I am Vinay Ramakrishna. Today, I am going to introduce myself to you all. Let me split my 29 years of life into 3 phases.
My first phase, I call it Bliss. This phase is from the beginning of my life until the end of my school – i.e. 10th standard. The reason I call this phase of mine bliss is because I had very few responsibilities on my shoulders. This phase consisted mostly of assignments, exams once a year and the rest of the time was only fun. If you think about it, this is the best part of anybody's life. The irony of life is that it is long gone before you even realize and enjoy it fully. If given an opportunity, I do want to go back to that phase of bliss again. That’s about my first phase.
My second phase of life, I call it Confusion. This is from the beginning of PUC i.e. after 10th standard.
Until 10th standard, you have more or less a set syllabus and you don’t have too many options to pick from other than CBSE, ISCE and the state board. But when you come to PUC, you are bombarded with options and that’s where my confusion started. Then somehow I picked a stream and moved into my PUC. But if you look at the options and the confusion here - you are not allowed to pick a stream, try it out for a few months and if you don’t like it then change to some other stream. That way, softwares are much better as they have a trial option.
After PUC, my confusion started to build again. It was even more serious because there are lot more options when you get to engineering. So, we live in a society where our dad decides what we wear, our mom decides what we eat and our neighbor decides what we do in life. Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened to me. Still I ended up in computer science and I joined BMSCE, even though I was totally confused about what to do in life.
So, how did I resolve this confusion? What did I do? I had this thought in mind from the beginning that if I was in confusion, I will just follow my friends. I did exactly that. Everyone started saying, engineering in Computer science or Electronics. Eventually, I ended in Computer science.
Four years at BMS was bliss. It was like the first phase of my life all over again. It was really good. In the final semester, confusion started to creep in again. It was about what to do next in my life. That was the biggest question. So, again I followed my friends. Some of them decided to write CAT and joined the CAT course. I followed and I joined the CAT course. I lost interest within the first month and eventually I didn’t even write the CAT exam. So, what next? Some of my friends said they were planning for GRE and they wrote the GRE exam. I thought, why not? Let me take the GRE and go abroad for higher studies. I followed them and wrote the GRE exam. I got admits from a few universities but I was not ready to go at that time. So, I worked for one year at Ittiam Systems. Then I got an admit from CMU and I went there. This was my second phase, which was all about confusion and following my friends to wherever they went.
The third phase of my life, I call it Reality. There is a saying – When Reality hits you, it hits you real bad. Sometimes, it hits you multiple times.
I was at CMU and I started wondering what I was doing there. I had paid a huge amount as tuition fees and I remember thinking that this was not the dish I ordered. I had lot of confusion in my mind at that time. I had lot of questions - unanswered questions. What I was doing here? What I wanted to do in my life? What should I pursue ahead? It had become similar to the Jackie Chan movie – Who Am I? I was 24 years old and I didn’t know who I really was. It was a terrible state actually.
I thought let me address some of my questions. How did I address these? I did two things. One, I stopped following my friends. The other thing I did was, I didn’t pick anything that didn’t interest me, and that included even my courses.
Coming back to what I was doing before – i.e. following my friends. Can I blame them? Because of them I landed in different places that weren’t for me. If given an opportunity again, I would have taken Architecture as my specialization during my engineering days. When I was 18 years old, I didn’t even take any architecture exam. I still feel 18 years is too early for someone to decide his or her career.
I can’t blame my friends because they knew their goals, they followed their dreams and they are where they are. Where as in my case, I didn’t know what to do. I followed my friends and I was in the wrong location every time because of whatever I selected.
I finished my masters with customized courses. I had learnt that I shouldn’t take courses which didn’t interest me.
Eventually, I got into three companies and two of them didn’t offer to sponsor my work visa. Only one was left and I joined that company. I worked for a couple of months. I didn’t like the work that I was doing there because it was more or less similar to what I was doing before I left for masters. I didn’t really see any reason to continue there. I could have easily switched jobs to a different company and gone to a different location in US. But I had slowly learnt that I shouldn’t be doing anything that didn’t interest me.
So, I left the country and came back to Bangalore. I joined Juniper Networks and worked there for one year. I realized that working in a big company, you won’t get that exposure and you won’t have lot of responsibilities. That’s when Agile 3 folks were looking for people here in Bangalore and I joined the company.
Coming to the end of the speech. So, how different am I now compared to what I was 24 years old? One thing I have learnt is to not follow anyone. The other thing I have learnt, is I will only pick something if I am really interested in. Do I know my destination? Where am I going? I don’t know where my destination is. One of my friends said that if you know your destination beforehand then you run towards it and after that what will you do? So, it is mainly about the journey and not as much about the destination. From that day forward, I have started to enjoy my journey of life and hopefully I will reach my destination someday.
Moral of my story – Don’t follow others. Be yourself and follow your instincts!
To be continued…
