My grandfather taught me the real engineering
First thing first… What is engineering to you?
For me, Engineering is NOT about spending 4 years in college and studying a few topics/subjects, getting good marks… proceeding to next semester. And in the end, having a good CGPA. Because if that’s what engineering is... I sucked at it.
And now I realise, Graduating from a small college based out of a remote area in Haryana, affiliated to a 3rd class university. And getting worried around the grades, maybe, wasn’t just worth it.
To me engineering is the problem-solving skills, Engineering enables this understanding to come to life through problem-solving, designing stuff and building things. The vision, to view a situation in a way to fix it and then automate that as much as possible.
Engineering comes out of laziness(for me at least) because check out this guy’s profile who wrote a few really awesome automating scripts out of laziness, that included Sending automated emails like “not feeling well/gonna work from home” etc and a random “reason” from another predefined array of strings, in case of hangover.
So, How did this all start?
A guy from a lower-middle-class family based out of a small place in Haryana, just a few miles away from the capital of the country. That place had just enough facilities to be counted as an urban area.
Born and bought in a joint family I was very close to my grandfather. He was a mechanic at a young age. He did experiment with a lot of things in his life. Coming from a very small town in UP, He learnt to repair radio transmitters at an early age. And then worked with TV sets. B/W was the trend back then. Then He also had a bicycle repair shop. But then he changed his profession as a cook in his own Restaurant. I really don’t know how did this transition happen.
My father also has a similar background. He used to repair wristwatches. And a few more people in my family also were connected to a similar background.
So from a lower-middle-class fam, where you try to save every penny possible for the betterment of family and future, we use to also save on repair costs for anything’s broken down at home, as much as possible.
From electric sockets and other electronic items at home to 2-wheelers, I have seen my grandfather repair anything. Retired from his work he also had time for this all. And I also use to get my hands dirty with him in most of his work.
Me grooming; Here’s the story
By the time I was 13–14, I started to efficiently help my grandfather with all this stuff, which included basics of repairing fans, electric wiring at houses, repairing his scooter, my bicycle, Motors, jet pumps, voltage stabilisers and what not. We never repaired the internal wiring of all the motors, fans or circuits, as that required an extra set of tools etc, and/or a different skillset. In this all, he was always concerned about my safety. So he didn’t let me deal with live wires till I was around 16.
I used to also deal with cassette players and setting up speakers and FM radio sets with one of my uncles. Apart from this, I used to open up my battery-powered mechanical toys like toy cars, etc. to extract small motors and small bulbs and LEDs out of them.
Basic education added to it
My school wasn’t a big school, but one of the best schools in the town. Studies till 7th and 8th standard were really useless for me, except for maths. I wasn’t just not good at it, but I sucked at it. I just used to somehow score marks needed to pass till then.
But life changed when I actually started studying Science, in 9th standard and understood all behind the scene concepts of various things I have been already practising at home. Like I already knew that it will spark up and blow up if -ive and +ive polarity of wires touched, but I didn’t know why? I knew about a motor converting electricity to mechanical energy, But how? I used a small motor out of one of my toy cars and reversely connected the rotating shaft to another motor and generated electricity out of the latter one, just for the proof of concept of a power generator. But I didn’t know how generators internally worked.
Then when I was in 9th standard, textbooks started making sense to me. Science books started explaining things, Polarity, charge, electrons in electronics and Electromagnets, Fleming left hand, right-hand rules. All started to build my logic.
Into the technology
By this time I was very much interested in all this, But as a childhood dream or fantasy, I always wanted to be a pilot. But an introverted child, not good at school except for maths and science, scared to talk to new people and in a family where nobody knew how could I pursue my dream, I didn’t know What do to with that.
Meanwhile, I got so much interested in this, that my life’s goals subtly changed to be an engineer. In around 2005, with a few computer lab classes in school and a few of my friends having PCs at home, increased my interest in it. And I opted for Introductory IT as an additional subject in my 10th board. With no classes in school & self-study getting me good marks, boosted my confidence and gave me the courage to choose C++ as the main subject in 11th standard along with Science(Non-medical).
PS: I never liked biology. After this, the path was a little set. Computer science engineering.
What wasn’t Right
The education system! The college! It was just NOT RIGHT. It was focused on theoretical knowledge rather than practical. I was always more into labs and getting practical knowledge but Everyone else was just running towards getting marks in mains which was more leaning to how much you write in exams. Labs were like a formality. Again, marks in these labs etc were based on how good are you in internal theory exams. So I actually did not learn much out of the college other than theory, and very less practical knowledge in so-called Labs.
And here I am, a CompSci Engineer.
#Peace ✌🏻
