Friends Become Colleagues

Disclaimer

This will probably undergo countless changes before it gets published somewhere (if it ever does). But this is my space and it is just the way I intended it to be (minus some changes in favor of my work place).


When I graduated college and was far from confident about my future, I had a couple of options in front of me. Each had its own set of challenges and each had their benefits. The way I recall it today, it was something like this.

switch (my career-path) {
	case 1:
		Continue with what I was doing - some work here and there and swing across ideas that crossed mine or my friend’s mind.
	case 2: 
		Take a shot at understanding organizational practices and swim into the ocean of countless treasures of programming.
	default:
		There is nothing here.
}

Well you are smart enough to crack this enigma of a code. I chose case 2 and amongst many options before me, I yearned for that best shot and nailed that down.

I must tell you this, the process to get in here is far from a fairy tale. You have to, and when you write those best lines of pseudo code you have ever written, you have to face these giants - who fire questions from all over and you have to bravely take some to your guts and duck a few that can bleed your nose pretty bad (I am sure it’s exaggerated, but you know, what’s not in writing?). When I had made it through, I was feeling ecstatic, not alone but with Krishu and 19 others.

So we took on this tedious (6 weeks for many, 12 for some extra ordinaries) journey and shine through it. More than half were the faces that I was already familiar with, so it was less scary in that way, but a whole lot more competitive than anyone ever admitted. We all did our best.

Internship went by in a flash and less than half of us were selected. Saugat dai brought us to the second floor and made us have a seat besides one another. Six friends, three of them even sometimes shared their bed (not kidding)- it was barely a new experience for us. It felt as though KU had a really cool lab in Kathmandu and we were liberated from those dreadful hours of traveling and could instead come study at this, rightfully acclaimed - “Oasis of Kathmandu”.

Like every other thing in the entire universe, practicing professionalism with your friends had its own pros and cons. 

Cons first - I still had to see Nadeem’s (wanna be friendly) face and Rajshree followed our project group even after college. Seriously Rajshree? Who in their right minds would have imagined that? Nothing felt new. And I cannot stress that enough. During the early days, we were having fun but we could all tell from each other’s face that this was not exactly what we pictured our work life would be. In many ways it took away countless of once-in-a-lifetime feelings. Seeing all the new faces, feeling lonely in a corner, having doubts about whether or not I belonged here - none. And no, these are not entirely bad, we ought to have some, at least that is what I believed. But, there I was besides my room-mate writing codes just like that of our college days. Slowly, the fear of just being limited to a bubble creeped in and it was unique because a new employee should have never felt that.

But those were all the cons. Everything else was about to change, for the better. And the way I see it today, those were barely anything that mattered a lot.

Fast forward to almost eight months, things have changed almost exactly how we had anticipated. Each of us, as an individual has grown. Today, I barely see any of us as the same old college mate. It is strange, but I have to say we have become more professional. We analyze our every move, which back then used to be just another shot in the dark.

I still remember during our final presentation back in the college when Krishu had to bluff a professor about “Gradient Descent”, when all he knew about it was the word itself. We were not caught, instead he was so impressed that he sent our final paper for a national level presentation (not kidding, Rajshree can validate). Those were sheer luck, that ended as soon as we left the college premises. The office is entirely different.

Not only can he not bluff about anything to anyone, he doesn’t have to. Presenting a feature to a client or whoever it need be, is just putting thoughts into words. While doing that in itself is a task, Leapfrog in a way has that covered as well. From guilds that specifically help you open up and articulate your feelings to your seniors encouraging you to think out loud. They simply make it easier.

Looking back to our college days, we are all equally guilty of taking everything on or letting someone else take on the entire semester project. Now it’s the exact opposite. At the university, irrespective of whether or not you complete the project, you would pass the semester with flying colors, but now, it is not the case. And that, my friends, is exactly the change we all should strive for. You have your own set of responsibilities, which when you accomplish gives a sense of triumph. Every other task completed is a victory under your belt and there won’t be a stone unturned, to make you feel so, by your seniors.

I vividly remember this one time, helpless and compelled by habit, I had taken on more tasks than I could digest into my plate. It felt doable at first, but a week passed by and it went on to become overwhelming. This was when I learned a valuable lesson of teamwork, and this to my surprise was more satisfying than it ever had been in college. Thanks to Nadeem, he gallantly took on some of my load and saved me like a hero. I also realized that his wanna-be-friendly attitude was kind of genuine and I finally dropped the wanna-be from then on.

I must say we were a successful project group at college. With Rajshree’s brain and our face, we were a perfect combination. As much as we trusted her with her coding, she had an unadulterated belief towards our ability to talk professors out. On the contrary, today, we all have the best of both worlds. She is more than confident while delivering the KSS (Knowledge Sharing Sessions, yes we have those too) to the team and no one ever doubted her valedictorian(sadly, some social work student’s 4 GPA took that away from her) knowledge. We, on the other hand, are busy getting our hands dirty with keyboards. It is all falling right into places. Also she has this pure ecstasy during the beginning of the month. She says, “Now I get paid while getting to work with such cool guys from my college.” That was her exact words if I remember correctly, so you get the gist. She is happy.

I cannot quite sum things up in a sentence. But if I really have to, I would say we all have emphatically grown this past semester of our life. From those timid little kids who had anything but questions in their minds had them all answered in a countable number of days. Writing codes for the sake of writing has now become creating something to solve the problems of the real world, and that is quite a feat. Just as Krishu had said- “We never cared to even think that something we created could go live.” And yes he was correct, it never had crossed our mind. And now, realizing our undreamt dream is surreal. Talking to the scientists who are happily using our creation is something I take a lot of pride in. Of course, all of this doesn’t quite bring tears to my eyes. But the feeling is certainly comparable and it totally makes up for what I felt was missing during my early days at work.