This is a quick story of my college journey.I was a good student during school days who was a very studious used to score 90+% always and had an attendance of 99%. Now I feel I have wasted those school days. But why? I didn’t had much awareness about different things and nor had the curiosity as I was very focused on scoring good marks in 12th standard.

Like most of the students I also joined engineering. But ya It was not a straight forward experience.Some people (Don’t want to mention their name) told me to take mechanical engineering but I was interested to take computer science because from my childhood I used to explore different softwares in my computer and wanted to build one.So to convince the people about my decision I attended a career camp conducted by government for 12th students to experience or get a gist about different engineering fields. So I went their experienced Mechanical,Computer science and Electronics. I loved computer science and I took Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science in Tier 3 college (Did not focus on JEE and I focused on my state-board 12th exams due to lack of awareness)

My Learnings

1. Focus on Skills instead of Marks

2. Marks are important but there are lots of other things that are more important like your passion

3. Convince people with facts instead of fighting with them

College Life
I continued to be a studious person with 100% attendance and 9+ CGPA in the first semester. But in the second semester I got an opportunity to organize and Tech fest and Expo and my college. I got on duty and I learnt a lot from organising events. I improved my communication and people skills.In the second semester I did not go to college much was busy with organizing events and attending events ( Paper presentation,Case Study, Hackathons etc) so my real attendance was low as I was on On duty most of time. Irrespective not attending classes much I got good marks I was happy. So I thought why not continue this same journey where I focus on improving my skills instead of regular college studies.

In my second year I started exploring different domains in computer science and management like Web development, App development, Content Marketer, Community manager etc. I did multiple internships at different startups and learnt a lot about different functions and made a good pocket money.A very awesome thing that happened in my second year was I became a Google developer student lead.I got an opportunity to network with a lot of other people in the community and Gogglers. After that got to attend a series of awesome events like Google AI hackathon, Microsoft Learn student partner summit, Mobility Mission festival happened where I got to meet lot of great people and got to know about Product Management and UX design careers.

My Learnings

1. Awareness about different opportunities plays a major role in life

2. Don’t rely just on peoples opinion when it comes to choosing a career you try it out and experience it

3. Be passionate about your work

Then the very crucial year was going to come thats the third year of engineering.I got connected with one of the entrepreneur who was building a social media startup through a one of my known community contacts.This thing happened during the second year summer holidays. He offered me a generalist paid internship where I explored multiple roles and got to know that I like Product and UX more.As soon as I discovered my passion is in UX design and Product management I started learning about it but college started putting pressure on preparing for placements (Learn data structures ,Multiple Coding tests etc). I was not interest in coding as I had discovered my passion is in Product and UX design.

One day suddenly there was a news that everyone should go home back and there was going to be Lockdown all over India. This was a boon given to me. I utilised the covid holidays to ups-kill and explore in depth about product management and UX design.I completed Udacity UX nanodegree and gained a lot of practical knowledge from multiple online courses and build several side projects. As I had a lot of time I started sharing my learnings in LinkedIn.Initially I was getting less engagement but I was very consistent so I started gaining followers and engagement.

My Learnings

1. Learn in Public is best way to showcase your skills to the world

2. Personal Brand is very important. It increases your value

3. Network is your net worth

I got my first job ( 1 year Internship + Full time job offer ) at a company (which had service wing where they build products for other companies and their own Saas product). I got this job through a LinkedIn DM. I messaged the founder of the company asking for an Internship opportunity.I had a lot of rejections but I did not give up as I was very passionate about UX and Product.

My Learnings

1. If you don't ask, the answer is always no

2. Failures are stepping stone to success

3. Don’t loose hope after multiple rejections. Try to improve yourself to achieve your goal

My Career started after this ………
Much more learnings coming soon 🤩🤩🤩