Thoughts
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Intelligent or Curious?

He was intelligent as a kid, but did not make use of it.

This kind of narrative surfaces when folks around you are trying to provide information to the new entrant in the family. This introduction is also relevant when elderly people try to reconnect with their past.

He was mischevious, talkative and could not sit idle anytime.

Now, this is very much true for me. I have had borderline ADHD(self-claimed, no evidence), and as a kid, I could not prevent getting myself into trouble. In general, I needed extra attention.

As a kid…

At 10, I was interested in skating and liked strolling on skates. After some time, I got bored of it as I did not have a fancy pair of skates like the other kids had. I would have got them had I insisted it to my parents. A genuine request was never overheard.

At the age of 12, I started participating in basketball. I liked getting up early to school to attend the practice session. As I could not get past the rookie level due to my height and eyesight🫥, I enjoyed standing on the sidelines and watching the senior folks play the game. I was just ok, to be part of extras and travel with the team to the tournaments.

At a much younger age, I was interested in electronics and opened up all my toys to find out their internal functioning. I used to play around with LED lights, D.C. motors, and once I even partially made the Diwali decoration lights. My parents were afraid that I might get myself electrocuted.

At extra-curricular activities, I felt bored and did not connect well with them. I had no fun playing an instrument, singing in choir or painting.

My parents supported me in any capacity they could. I feel I did not show much conviction in anything, or I could have used some guidance in clearing my mind.

You need to be spotted. It is a blessing if someone is interested in mentoring you.

Anything that made me feel pumped up interested me. As a child (and still do) I liked to listen to Punjabi folk music. Because of this, everyone around me called me a truck driver.

As a child, I heard a lot of slurs that made fun of me from other kids my age and sometimes from older people. People often called me Kalu, which means “black,” because I was darker than most North Indian kids, or Chamakha, which means “four-eyed,” because I wore glasses.

These labels would a first hit me hard, but slowly I started passing through them with a smile, but internally they did impact me.

At studies

I really didn’t want to do my homework, and I didn’t even write it down in my daily school notebook.

Also, I wasn’t very attentive in classrooms and would neglect to write things down from the board. One time, my father found out the day before a test that I was not prepared because I did not have notes for the subject.

In the evenings, I would go to extra lessons to make up for the time I didn’t use well during school hours.

Somehow I was able to get past Year-on-Year before I finally failed in 9th grade. I was temporarily promoted to the 10th standard, but my growth had to be tracked.

My parents were shocked and even thought of repeating the 9th grade again but then my mother was a Teacher herself and had seen similar cases in her school, stood firmly for me to carry on in the 10th grade.

and…

I was just following the lead of the other kids and hadn’t given it much thought. At the time, though, the fact that the children I was hanging out with were the scholarly kind was all that counted. We attended a group tutoring session that helped us plan out how to take the examinations.

But during the 10th grade finals, my so-called smart friends forgot about me. They stopped answering their phones when I called, and at one point they were down on my entire existence. It was really bad!

Fortunately, I scored 84% (420 out of 500) on 10th grade examination, and then everything changed. Everyone seemed to have noticed my brilliance; I was the center of attention. Someone said that I was the best in my family.

I had an offer that if I score 70% marks, I will get an iPod. And I got it ✌🏽.

Senior School and College

I failed again in 11th grade and passed conditionally but it was not a shocker for my parents as they now knew the template. Fail-Pass-Fail-Pass? 😂

I was a science student, and it is no Joke! But I wasn’t serious at all. My friendships changed and I had friends who were similar or some better to me. At that time, I was seeing a very smart girl, and our roll numbers were right next to each other. I may not be able to say anything else at this point. But please understand that my friend and I owe her good grades for 12th grade.

In college, things were pretty much the same. A good friend and classmate would sit one seat in front of me and wait an extra 1.5 hours after he was done with his work so I could finish mine.

I am not an intelligent, I just like things which engage the curious soul in me.

Grades and Good College are the standards by which one is evaluated, and I have never been one to care much about academics. But now I think I was wrong there, I should have cared enough to get into a good college because then certain things are assumed of you and you do not have to work hard to prove them.

I remember, during the exams, I would not attempt further if I was convinced that I had done enough to get passing marks.

and now?

I find peace in things that engage my curiosity. I came to the profession of software engineering by luck as my Uncle opened a few doors for me and I was curious to learn coding. Coding beautiful UIs makes me feel better. I feel empowered.

I can say I have worked hard here and did not take a shortcut. I studied diligently when I wanted to switch a job and did not try to game the system by cheating my way through the interviews.

Except for a brief stint at a startup, in my over ten years of experience as a software engineer, I have never been promoted to the position of senior software engineer. The internal politics are to blame for 60% of this, while my involvement is just 40%. The interviews are within my power, and I manage to give a lot of them and fail miserably at a lot of them.

I have not been able to advance in my career despite landing jobs at some of India’s most prestigious software companies, including Flipkart, Atlassian, and now Amazon. Amazon was my dream company, and even though I was consistently offered lower-level positions in every interview I went on, I still accepted the offers since I was interested in working for these organizations. I always thought that maybe by getting in first, I have a better chance of getting up the ladder than from outside while interviewing.

Summarise

I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

If it is worth working for Amazon, then it is worth working for it at your skill level. Why put things like level expectations between the experience you will get? Ownership, stress, and commitment will be the same whether you are an Engineer or a Senior Engineer. This isn’t always true, but it is in my case.

I don’t try to be perfect, and I’m happy with 80% progress.

I think I lack the patience to get past that 80% because even after some amount of hard work, you need the force of time to compound on top of that hard work.