Four Years: Gone in 60 seconds

End of College Days. Four Years is a big time in a man’s life.

College days were the most relaxed period in my lifetime. These 4 years have been really crucial. They changed me a lot. I don’t wish to say that my college changed me or the life at college changed me.

I want to think back and talk about the After-CollegeHours Life, which played a big role.

In fact the credit goes to those Made-Easy books by Charulatha Publications. They gave me a lot of free time. Honestly, I owe Engineering degree to them. The power and reach of Charulatha Publications can be easily understood, by the fact that it has got a place, in 99% of Tamil Nadu college student's blogs.

So, studying for exams were just from those booklets. And that too, just a few hours before the university exams. Believe me, even if you are totally blank about the subject and if there are just 3 hours until the exams are going to begin, there can be just one solution:

Open the Charulatha book.
Read the CONTENTS page.
Oh God, what an amount of confidence that gives..

Rest is History... Go through the book for 2 hours.. I am sure, you can get 75% in Anna University exams.. I did this for 5 semesters and now I have a score of 77%. Maybe I would have got that magic number 80 if I had the power and patience to learn by rote. But I feel extremely happy and satisfied because I got this mark without cramming up a single question. More important is, I got this mark without wasting time in cramming up those huge textbooks.

So, how did I spend the time?
Good Question.

Before entering this college I did not know much about computers. I just knew some C++ (just those fibanocci and factorial kind of stuff and not OS implementation in C++) and some RDBMS stuff in school. I never tinkered around the computer.

The 1st and 2nd year of college were the times of tinkering around my computer. It was during these days I got to know what a hard-disk is, what a boot sector is, what a partition table is, what is ext2 filesystem, what is i-Node, what is L-2 cache, or how to resolve dependencies in LINUX.
Thanks to Bala and Karthi for those independent discussions while the boring lectures were on. I learnt a lot from them.

3rd Year was highly academic. I developed a strange interest towards core computer science. (Though, Now, after reading Paul Graham's essays, I dont like to use the term Computer Science).
I got my own collection of great CS books. My only aim was to do some great research in Computer Science. I read about System Software, Operating Systems, Computer Algorithms, Compiler Design, Computer Architecture, ..All from good Books. I used to dream about becoming a Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Steve Jobs, or Tim Paterson. (Bill Gates??)

Then came the Final year- the best of all.

I became a great Microsoft Fan (and an evangelist). I became a Microsoft Student Partner.

I got this interest towards blogs. I started reading a lot of blogs- blogs.msdn.com being my favorite. I started my own technical blog.
Off this tech-stuff, I started reading a lot of books. I started reading a lot of non-technical blogs also. I watched some good movies. I met some really great people. I read about some great people.

I enjoyed every evening in these 4 years. It changed me a lot. One thing I learnt is that, whatever be the information you get, grasp it. Dont think of the possible uses of it, or how it will benefit you. Dont think whether you are connected to it. JUST ACCEPT IT.

The best part of College life were the crucial evening meetings. It always used to be Girish, Bala or Arvind with me.

And then, the frequent bike ride's on East Coast Road with Girish. Those waits in that Tea Shop in front of Maayajal. Aaah .. Awesome!!!

Apr 20, 2001 - Apr 4, 2005: Gone in 60 Seconds...