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Story of the Month - April, 2001 |
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My father is quite surprised that I ended up continuing my education with a major of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. I was a kid who escaped from his first day of school. From my childhood, I had this curiosity to know how things work. To fulfill my curiosity I broke all of my electronic toys into pieces. My curiosity reached in such a peak that my mother had to lock them up into a locker. But, that couldn’t stop me from destroying our brand new V.C.R. My father used to call me, “Good for nothing”. But, while I was in 9th grade, in our school science fair, I proved myself as a future electrical engineer by building a model circuit for the traffic system of our city. After getting the 1st prize, I got this valuable advice from my father: “Do whatever interests you, and don’t let the work challenge you, make sure you are challenging that work.” I have always preferred the courses which are challenging, and the projects which are related to real life problems. I am exuberant that Purdue University gave me the opportunity to fulfill my interests. Some of the technical courses that interested me were: Introduction to Engineering Tools, C Programming, Circuit Analysis I, and Electronic Measure Techniques. I was assigned several projects in these courses and luckily most of these projects were based on real life problems. Recently I worked with op-amps and oscilloscopes, which gave me a basic idea of circuit analysis and circuit layout I also did enjoyed most of the projects on C programming because they were related to real life. One of the projects that interested me most was building a shipping program. This program was intended to be a tool that will be used by a shipping company to create a bill for customer. There would be a text file having the specifications of the shipping materials, and my program would go through the list and specify how much to charge for each item on the list. Then the program would work that amount in the form of an invoice out to another text file. I
found this particular project interesting because it exposed me to
business related work. It was a large project, So I was mentally
preparing myself to sit next to a computer for a long time. I
divided the whole project into several small sections and
categorized it. When I understood the project clearly, I used my
brainstorming skill on it, and sketched an algorithm. I verified my
algorithm with my teaching assistant and professor before jumping
into coding. This way I received additional feedback on my project,
and felt more comfortable that I was on the right track. I think it
is an excellent benefit to communicate with a professor and a
teaching assistant. At first, I was intimidated to ask questions of
the form “how do I do it”, because I did not know how to ask the
question correctly. But as I kept working on my algorithm and
discussed with my teaching assistant, I became more comfortable with
asking questions and those “how” questions soon turned into
“what if I do this and that” or “is it an optimized way to
accomplish this” types of questions. This way, it became easier
for the TA to answer my questions easily and I was learning my
project intuitively.
I am firm believer of the
saying that: “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99%
perspiration.” I put my It
took me approximately four days to write the code, and I was tired,
because I did not sleep well those days. The desire to solve the
problem kept me sleepless all night brainstorming in even greater
details. I loved to hear my favorite songs while working on coding
because I think it helps me to continue my work with the computer. I
debugged the program after I wrote each part, and every time I saw
it running promptly, I exploded with joy; it was a great time for
me. I remember the last day of my work. I was getting some debugging
error, and it was taking time to find the error. The problem looked
impossible, so I was annoyed. At that moment, the janitor who works
in that building came in to clean. He had headphones in his ear, and
he was dancing while cleaning the room. I looked at him and burst
out laughing. That hilarious moment calmed me, and I started to work
with newly energized passion. Within a half of an hour I fixed the
problem, and a big smile appeared on my face. I was thinking of
dancing like that guy because it was a monumental achievement for
me. The
whole project ended up giving me confidence on my work and enriched
my passion for hard work and patience. Each step of my work inspired
me to keep on working proving once again that breaking up a large
problem into small parts/steps can ease the workload and maximizes
the possibility of finding a solution faster. Discussing the problem
with TA’s was also very beneficial. I realized the importance the
working in groups and sharing ideas. I had to face the obstructions
every minute, and by facing those challenges, I learned the most
important lesson of my life, “Don’t give up.” I am glad that I
have achieved that virtue, and now I have gained the efficiency and
confidence to attempt any kind of project. Patience and endurance is
an invaluable part of life. |
