"Internship Diaries"

It is not a tale of impressive deeds
Its a piece of life taken in a moment
when I'm cruising along a given path
with the same identity of aspirations
and dreams:-

"Internship Diaries”

1. The Background:

June 2006 , It was the end of my first year when some of my friends from IIT's were coming back to India after completing their summer interns in Europe ,Canada and USA. I was quite curious to meet them, to know about their experiences were while their internship and to know the procedure for applying for intern. Soon I met with Bhartiji aka "Omi bhaiya" as he was in Indore after completing his intern in Canada. He replied to all my queries and soon I was quite clear that what is required for applying.
During my first year I realized that being a topper in exams is not a big thing for the outer world as whether one is topper or average, chances are they lend up in the same firm. So being a topper did not excite me since I was not in prestigious institute like IIT .From inside I was looking for a new adventure, challenge or a goal. So at last I found a challenge that anyhow I have to go for a foreign intern during my bachelor’s degree.
Although chances of getting foreign intern in second year is quite niche for students whether they are from IIT or some other institute , so in my case IIT was minus infinity. But I took a chance in hope of getting some fruitful result. Each day for hours I used to search for universities, departments & prof’s of the field of electronics and mailed them my CV and CL.
On college front, I was not regular, the impact of this habit lead to taunts from a few of my profs and some of my batch mates and I assume they thought that I was an insincere lad who didn’t know what to do! Sometimes when prof's asked "what are you going to do Mr.Mudgal after your degree", my predictable answer was acting like a numb and soon I used to hear voice of my colleagues shouting " Sir yei zindagi bhar bas online betha rahega" and there were a few too like " pata nahi kya hoga iska"..."Job lag jaye to badi baat hogi"....
But i never reacted on these statements as these people were quite unaware of what I was up to...and for me to it was a risk that whether I would get foreign intern or not??
After mailing at least 3500-3700 mails till April 2007, I got a remote co-operation project under a prof from Europe and for vacations it was decided that I was going for an internship to IIT-R with my friends.
September 2007, it was the beginning of my third year and this time I was more optimistic about getting internship as my CV was quite impressive .With same hope, operation “Summer Internship " started. On 26th Nov,2007 I decided to apply for intern in Swiss as I had heard and had searched out that a lot of research work was going on there and other tempting factor was that, Swiss was going to host Euro'08 soccer .Soon I started mailing to profs of Swiss universities , it was 500th mail of this season and in the afternoon of 26th , I found myself on cloud nine because I received a positive reply from one of the profs and the mail state the confirmation of my intern.
It was one of the happiest moment of my life that I still cant describe in words , the feel of immense satisfaction and proud feeling of the being the first student of my insti who was going for foreign intern .At last my hard work and patience paid off. At that moment I could recall the line from movie Shawshank Redemption," Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of the things and good thing never dies".
At last I want to thank Ankur Gehlot(IIT-B) , Anshuman , Puri ,Puppy , Sid(IIT-D), Abhinay Dubey, Gaurav Ghotiya(IIT-R) and "Bhartiji" coz without their help my achievement would not have been possible and last but not the least , to my parents and friends for their support.