Tuesday 4 August 2015

My First internship - with IBM !!

Being an MCA 1st year student, I was expecting this to be a 9 to 5 developer job and was excited for the same. But things did not turn out the way I was expecting them to be. The first week of internship was disappointing since I had to do everything from talking to startups at incubators to giving presentations in events and meet ups, from helping hackathon participants to creating an application on the same platform .

The second reason I was not happy with my internship was because most of the time I wanted to hide under the table. Yes you read it right, even after being the president of lean in society of my college and inspiring so many girls to lean in ....  I felt not suitable for the internship. All my colleagues had so many achievements. They were from best of the institutes of India like NIT and IIT. One was an android expert, other had created an IoT device that makes the tree tweet. Some were doing more than one internship at the same time while other had just completed an internship from U.S. I felt so out of the place for not having any achievement . By the end of the week, when I came disappointed and tired from office my parents asked " how are you going to inspire women who are looking up to you when you yourself can't dare to sit at the table ? ". The very next day Lean in Facebook page posted the quote "kick the shit out of option B". That was the Universe's sign that I was doing something wrong. 

Starting conversations with strangers and giving presentations in front of them was not something I was very fond of. It was not in my comfort zone. The only thing I could talk about to strangers was .... Yes you are right... Sheryl Sandberg's lean in . So in the second week whenever I had to talk to strangers, I used to start with how women hold themselves back at works place, appreciate the (very few) women present and then move on to IBM's cloud offerings. I spread about lean in wherever I went. By the end of the internship one of my colleagues said " this girls can go on and on about lean in ". 

Internship with IBM was a life changing experience. I feel more confident after two months. I can actually start any conversations about anything . I learnt two new frameworks - node.js and angularjs in two days and created an application on the same. Since I was evangelising IBM's platform as a service - bluemix, it was the best way to learn about cloud computing.  I met the most ambitious group of people I've ever met and made new friends.  Because of these people I see life from a different perspective. I learnt that leaning in is a continuous process. You have to constantly remind yourself to sit at the table and not underestimate your abilities. I learnt what Sheryl  Sandberg actually meant by "sitting at the table" and " kicked the shit out of option B" . 



8 comments:

  1. cool buddy ! keep it up ! :D

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  2. You dont need to hide under the table. You ma'am, encourage me to be a much more better person and to speak for me.

    I owe you big time! Cheers!!!

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  3. I guess I'll kick the shit out of option B too :)

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  4. You are turning to my role model. Hats off... the more i read about you... the more i fall for the respect and this must achievement in such tender age make me feel proud that i know you. (Although we met once )

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    1. Thank you so much :) It is because of the support of women like you that I have been able to lean in in my life :)

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