After finishing high school, I jumped into an undergrad degree in Computer Science. Well, “jumped” might be overstating it. It was more like being nudged into a corner, mildly confused, and told to “pick something.”

I wasn’t even fixed on CS at the starth2

Honestly, I wanted to explore Aeronautics or ECE. Aeronautics sounded cool, and ECE felt familiar since my dad works in telecom. My brain at that time was generating ideas at a rate proportional to my cluelessness.

At one point, I genuinely imagined building a device that could combine the internet speeds from every phone in a room. Like taking Jio, Airtel, and whatever else, and magically getting a “sum of all speeds” output for my laptop just so I could stream cricket without buffering.

Yes. That was the level of “engineering” I was operating on.

I eventually found out that this idea already exists (it’s called bonding/aggregation) and that my notebook sketch wasn’t about to revolutionize ISP technology. But that was the moment I realized I liked messing with things to make tech “work better,” even if the motivation was just desperate cricket streaming.

Then reality gently tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Bro, do you even math?”

The answer, supported by a –6 in JEE Advanced, was a very humble “no.” My physics was goated though, so big W there.

So I let go of the fighter-jet fantasies and accepted that Aeronautics might not appreciate my calculus skills. I moved toward CS partly because I genuinely liked tech, and partly because the job market for Aero or ECE in India didn’t exactly sparkle.

And let’s be real, CS pays fat money.

The Sem 1 Speedrunh2

I joined PES University through KCET, which meant my college started late. We basically speedran Semester 1 in about four months. Same syllabus, less time, zero sympathy.

To make it weirder, there were no major CS subjects. It was just math, basic electronics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and one Python course. Since I was already comfortable with Python, I breezed through that and spent the rest of the time wondering why I was studying mechanical engineering.

By Sem 2, they finally gave me C programming. That was fun because I got to explore the freedom of manipulating memory and working at a low level. But they also dumped Mechanics and Physics on us. Did I rant? Yes. But looking back, having fewer heavy CS subjects in the first year actually gave me the freedom to explore what I actually wanted to do outside the syllabus.

The Core Era (Sem 3 & 4)h2

This was the turning point. We hit the holy trinity: DSA, Computer Networks, and Operating Systems.

This is when I fell in love with understanding how things actually work. I liked seeing the internals, the processes, and the packets.

I’ve never been the “study consistently through the semester” guy. I’m more of a one-nighter and panic-driven motivation enthusiast. But the thing is, my learning didn’t come from the textbooks anyway. I’d spend hours on YouTube or reading blogs about OS internals and random CS rabbit holes just because it was fun.

When exams rolled around, it felt more like revision because I’d already obsessed over the concepts on my own time. Grades were decent, but the learning was maximum.

The Big Data Shift (Sem 5)h2

I took an elective called Big Data that changed the trajectory for me.

It wasn’t a boring theory dump. It was full of real-world stuff like distributed file systems, message queues, in-memory processing, and tech like HDFS, Kafka, and Spark. Combined with DBMS, this semester just amplified my interest in systems.

Meanwhile, I took a peek at ML and Data Analytics, and they politely reminded me that the AI world wasn’t it for me. Nothing against AI, I’m open-minded, but I realized I’m more of a core systems guy than a “let’s tune 87 hyperparameters and pray” guy.

The “Click” Moment (Sem 6)h2

Then came Cloud Computing and DBT. Cloud hit different.

We explored virtualization, scalability, distributed architecture, and the surprisingly elegant solutions systems people come up with to solve modern cloud problems.

For the first time, I clearly saw how everything connected. OS, networks, virtualization, distributed compute, databases. All the stuff I’d been exploring in pieces suddenly clicked together into one big picture.

Looking Backh2

My college journey hasn’t been about following a perfect plan, it’s been about stumbling into what I love.

The pattern is pretty obvious now. I learn best when I’m curious, not when I’m forced. YouTube deep-dives at 2 AM taught me more than most of my professors did. Panic-studying the night before exams somehow worked. I don’t recommend it, but I can’t lie and say I didn’t do it.

As for the placement story? Well, that chaos deserves a post of its own. (Check the sidebar or click here).