How a chapter of trigonometry changed my life.

A below average student till class 10th, I was more of a vocalist than anything else. Wanted to purchase an electric guitar after breaking brother’s acoustic one, a request to which just like any other Indian parent would obviously refuse or maybe it was just my case(IDK). I used to love playing GTA Vice City on my computer, used to spend 8 hours playing that amazing game. Found myself fixing my computer so many times with the motivation to keep playing. After school, my folks suggested me to go ahead with computers instead of finance and accounts(Best decision of my life).

October 2010 First lecture on “Programming with C” at college and at that very moment I realised how much of trouble I had dragged myself into. All other students at the college were from science background or at least knew about “computers” in general. On the other hand, I appeared to be clueless and calculating remaining time for that lecture to end.

A little about my past…

December 2007 One of my future mentors insulted me about what I was doing with my life. Out of anger I self-taught myself “trigonometry”. Honestly, I was just trying to mock that chapter and make fun of all the formulas in a funny way. It turned out to be my favourite chapter, as it was the first chapter I aced at school because surprisingly I found it to be interesting. When I realised other students were not that good in it, self-taught myself the remaining mathematical concepts using an Oxford reference book subscribed it from the school library and suddenly realised what a pile of crap N.C.E.R.T books were. However, full of important examples and exercises I couldn’t run away from.

Realising the fact I’m good at one thing made me confident towards the entire outlook of life.

Now coming back to college days, I spent a generous amount of time with “Let Us C” book, ended up scoring more than the C programming language lecturer’s favourite list of students in the subject. The trick was, the theory not practical, sucked at it back then. Completing my Bachelors became a game to me, I just knew what to read before the exams which were basically “Everything”.

July 2013 Now, not all was glamorous or easy for me I failed at my first attempt to get a job at an Indian MNC. Without losing much of hope I prepared myself for regular Masters Degree entrance exams and to my surprise found myself with a job offer from the best company out of the bunch. Sept 2013 GTA V released. Funny, when you have a job in hand, same Indian parents will even let you purchase an Xbox(another funny story maybe for some other day). In my defence, I really needed it to play that game as it was not available on PC back then.

Mar 2014 Joined my dream Telcom. based software services & hardware stacks company Aricent as a Test Engineer. Still look at it as my foundation where they approved of teaching self with the available resources in hand(internet mostly). Then one of my friends gave me a book called “Programming Pearls” after going through it. I gave up automation/manual testing as a profession.

Sept 2015 After many rejections from many companies decided to become a freelancer, worked as a web developer but mostly an iOS apps developer. Within 3 months joined a product based start-up ServX currently backed by YCombinator and other HNIs.

June 2016 Seeking challenges joined an organisation where I met one of my mentors and currently working with at Kerb, remotely as a Full-stack Developer and a Ventures Scout at Navitas Ventures.

August 2017 I got my Masters degree in Computer Applications which I completed while working as a software engineer and co-organising meetups for iOS Developers in my city.

Not trying to portray I’ve achieved anything or something, these are mostly the good parts and I had a lot of support of amazingly supportive friends. There’s a lot more for me to learn. Fail fast!

I’m just trying to display how I found the turning point in my life with a mathematics chapter that I self-taught myself. Also, an electric guitar looks like a bad investment to me now. All I needed was a subscription to Apple Music.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers!