The Hurdle Theory

 I was about 14 years old when the idea of the "Hurdle Theory" came into my mind, initially it wasn't concrete and sort of amorphous but in due time it solidified its roots. The basic frame came to me when we had our Speaking and Listening assessments that day and the idea of the exam was to call students in pairs and have them speak on random topics that were assigned to them a day ago, and later on, the teacher would ask questions to both the students about each other's topics, my partner had the topic, "Problem Solving" and she gave a holistic approach of involving the deep study of the problem and knowing how to start and end it certainly helps, but when I was asked about what I thought, I gave an impromptu answer that only just made the landing but later on when I thought about it, it became a great help in times when nothing worked.

So the Hurdle Theory, is basically treating a problem in front of you like a hurdle race, where the hurdles are small broken down pieces of the bigger problem that you are facing, and you just have to overcome each small hurdle with a correct mindset and ensure every leap gives you direction and it is not a race with time or other people who are solving the problem, but how effective and efficient each jump you take is because these hurdles wouldn't make you fall, but crossing them will only make subsequent hurdles easier to leap through. 

I don't always use this theory, but in times where you have no idea where to start or what to do next, it certainly helps you pave way that makes it a bit easier.

My First Day as a Trainee Backend Developer

 My first day as an Intern developer in a startup was a DISASTER, and no I am not over exaggerating. I had mentioned it in my first blog (check it here) about the story of how I got the internship and knowing that one can guess, why my first day would have been a disaster. I had no idea what lied ahead, going into a new realm of work. Being from a different background of study and then working in a very different field altogether was quite overwhelming.

I can never forget that first group call, we were introduced to the team where we exchanged a few light-hearted comments with other developers, along with their backgrounds and field of study. To my surprise, almost half the developers were in fact from no CS field, but later on, had shifted to computer science. This certainly gave me some confidence and hope that I can maybe survive here. It happens sometimes right? try and remember the school days when you forgot a notebook on the day of submissions and you are worried about the punishment that follows, but you notice that 20 more have done the same, and now you feel less worried for no reason, it was that kind of feeling. So after the formalities were over, we were assigned tasks for the day, my task, now when I think of it was fairly simple and very easy, but when it was instructed to me, I had no idea how will I complete it. I can't explain the whole thing here but it was of creating a plugin on a third-party website." plugin', "third party", "XML" these words were brand new to my brain, and as anyone's brain does, my brain refused to comprehend them. All in all the task was more research-oriented than coding because even our manager knew that he had to keep it light for me on the first day. On the other hand, I despised him for giving me such a task. From the 1st minute, I knew I won't be able to complete it because I had never heard anything like it, and secondly I didn't know where to start from? Knowing where to start from is half the battle won, but not knowing what and how to do it certainly kicks your confidence to the ground.

We all know that it's important to learn from experiences and not repeat the mistake ever again, but nobody talks about how difficult it is to see yourself make that mistake and do nothing about it, anyway,  the day went by , i couldn't do anything. At EOD we all met for another call and discussed our progress. I had nothing to talk about because I had made no progress, I was ready for the embarrassment that was due to be followed, "first day, first impression, and he did nothing !!" I knew I had to hear the inevitable, but to my surprise, all I heard was," no worries, tell me what were the obstacles that slowed you down?" How nice of him to save me from the embarrassment, but on second thought, what were the obstacles that slowed me down, I didn't have anything to answer to that either! and just when I was about to say that I don't know how to answer the question, a realization struck me, all this time I was looking at the problem from an outsider's perspective and never really thought of solving the problem, all I was thinking the whole day was, how would I start? instead, I should have thought about whats the problem at hand, broken it down into small hurdles, and should have crossed each hurdle by the minute slowly and steadily, treating it not like a race against time, but ensuring that I cross each hurdle with the right mindset and direction and thus friends my little hurdle theory was born, and the day that I did nothing went on to teach me a lesson that never kept me idle.

How I landed my first Internship as a Trainee Backend Developer.

I don't think I would ever forget my first day when I joined in as an intern in a startup during my college days. But more about this later on, because the story of getting into that role is rather interesting. I never thought that fate and luck would play such a major role in my life before this happened. But before we start with the story, I would like to give a brief about my graduation and the field of study I was in. I am an Electronics and Telecommunications engineer and up until my third year I was pretty sure that my career would primarily focus on electronics and robots, not because I was interested in the field but because everyone in my branch would not shut up talking about it and you know how the famous proverb goes, "you are defined by the company you keep." :P but little did I know that it's going to change drastically when I start my 7th semester.

It was during early covid days when we started our final year and had to get a project guide for the final year's project, and unlike the others in our class we thought of going a very different way, instead of going for an internal guide we started searching for an external guide, because we thought it would look "cool" and will get us extra marks (lol who were we kidding.). After a few weeks, we found a senior who had a startup related to AI and ML and came to terms with doing a similar project related to the latter. We got really excited up until the point when our guide told us to brainstorm ideas about what kind of project we had to do. We had to think of something so "rad" that would blow his mind away and as this was going to be our first impression of him, we were really nervous. after about two days we had an online meeting, where we threw in our ideas and not surprisingly enough they were very "average." but what was surprising was the fact that he expected even less from us, we ended up impressing him. It sounds rude of him to expect less of us right? But he himself was from the same background as we were understood our stand on "computer science" and other budding technologies in general. We started working under his guidance and he started to see promise in us, I had no idea what we were doing, but after meetings, I used to read about it and watch youtube videos on it and started developing an interest in the same. It all felt intriguing, and the more I read and made small projects the more I started to like it. a month passed like this and suddenly one day our guide asked us whether we would like to work in his startup as interns, I always wanted an internship opportunity but never knew it will come to me when I least expected it to. I  knew I am going to say YES but couldn't answer him right away, he agreed and later on mailed us the clauses and some other rules that we had to abide by before starting work, in short, he sent us an appointment letter which also had the word "paid" on it. I couldn't believe it, I had other plans about internships but I never knew it would come to me eventually. That's the beauty of it isn't it, the thing that bugs us often, and makes us think about our future usually falls into place in ways we least expect it to, but little did I know that the day I join the startup and step in the world of computer science and IT, something called Imposter Syndrome is going to kick in and boy o boy it did.