50% engineer?? Definitely!!!

Its been pretty long time since I wrote something by myself on the blog. Well, was a lil' busy with PS thing.
Yeah, I am gonna describe it in brief.
PS a.k.a. Practice School.
Its one of its kind programme at BITS, Pilani. I am not too sure, but I guess in India atleast, no other institute offers such a nice way of industrial training to its students. We have PS-I, after second years, during the summer break, for around 55 days. There is PS-II, six month long, in the final year.
So, it was PS-I for me this summer. Somewhere around in march, we were told about the various centres all over the country where PS-I will be conducted. All 800 students from my batch were to fill in the preference order, and were alloted one of those 'practice stations'; as per merit and the preferences.
I got Centre for Railway Information Systems, Delhi /* to be referred as CRIS, here onwards */. It was my first preference. Reason number one, it was in Delhi /* :) */, and I expected there must be some interesting thing to learn there. /* damn, I lie big time, the secondary reason was its location in delhi, south delhi, the posh area... close to DU south campus.. :P */.
Anyways, I had one of my ex-wingie also at this centre... that's cool.
So, this PS-I thing was to start on 24th may'07. Now, as I told you, this unique thing in our insti, they had a few more arrangements for us. Each centre had one instructor /* read : faculty member */ and one student co-instructor /* a third yearite */. By the rule book, these two persons were to look after our training, they had to come regularly to the centre(s) assigned to them. And if they go by the rule book, its sure is not a good news for the students, like me.. :P. And it pretty much wasn't in my case. And apart from that, in this period of 54 odd days, we had two quizes /* written tests */, two group discussions, report submission and seminar, in the midterm, and at the end also. These were the arrangements made by our insti for us. This all sounds a bit wierd, but that's the way it is, for us.
We had to strictly follow the timings, 0930 hrs to 1730 hrs, five days a week. I took just one leave. A bit hard for a BITSian... :P. But, yeah, it helped in see the professional one. Though CRIS was a government organisation, it would had been different scenario had it been a private organization, still, it was all professional. On the second day of our PS, we eight people were alloted various departments, as per our interests. In a nutshell, CRIS takes care of all the IT related work for Indian Railways. So, it had much of software engineers in there. But, yours truely, being a eletronics student, is not much interested in that. So, I went to the telecom department. And it wasn't that a bad place. Though it mainly was about networking only, still, I loved the name 'telecom', which
sounds more of electronics, than computers :P.
It was for the first time that BITS had a training centre in CRIS. So, there were no such special arrangements there. Anyhow, we started our training. For a first few days, just saw the networking facilities there... saw the network devices, routers, switched, and the web servers hosting indian railways websites like irctc, trainenquiry, were also there. There were database servers also in the complex, bhramha and vishnu. It was pretty nice to see them. Now, we were to be alloted some project to work over for next 50 odd days. This department didnt had any special project or something going, where we 50% engineers could had contributed. So, it was almost decided that we'll be doing some study based project only. Later on, they asked us to make a little software to help them generate reports for network maintenance. So, it was like, we were three people in telecom departments, yours truely, Piyush, and Neha /* the latter names from BITS Pilani goa campus */. And we had two projects, one that software thing, and one analytic one, analysis of the next STARS network implemented by CRIS in Andaman and Nicobar. I am not going in any detail of them, not because its a state secret or something, but I dont want to. Yours truely and Piyush were on the analytic one, while Neha was handling the software thing, in which I also contributed unofficially. I would like to share my experience in that software development also, maybe sometime later.
Anyways... we showed our engineering skills pretty well all through the training. The two quizes, light, the two GD's, light. But yeah, that seminar and report thing, it did require some amount of energy to be spent.
The midterm report... it wasn't much trouble some for me, I prepared it one telecommunication basics, the thing I am pretty much interested in. Enjoyed preparing that report. And seminar, it didnt had much to worry about the presentation, but I had to prepare the slides also. But it was bit easy with the report already prepared. I started to work on the presentation at around 2200 hrs the previous night, and completed it by 1330 hrs. It went pretty well, but the audience was not from this field, it could had been better.
And the final presentation, the senior most person from telecom department was going to be there. It was bit scary also... that guy... I mean sir, I am pretty much impressed with his knowledge, and his attitude toward us also. And we were pretty scared for he definitely was going to cross question. We divided the presentation among two of us. The presentation, was not that bad, but boring for other trainees, who were from other departments. Though at that time I thought, not my fault, its never gonna interest them. But later on I realised, I should had made it interesting for those people also. Anyway, our fear, he did cross questioned both of us. A few we were able to answer back, in some, he shared his 'gyaan' with us. But at the end, he said he was pretty much impressed by the way we organised the stuff, and the way we presented, it was really good for students of our level, still wondering if that was just to flatter us. Anyway, the final presentation was over. Just that crappy report left. That day, we went to play pool, eight people, one table, half hour, it was much of fun there.
2-3 days more, now this report didnt interest me much, as I was sure that no one is going to give a shit for it. Completed it, got it printed, got a few things wrong, our prof almost threw the report at my face, not literally, the pages were not binded, and he realised it on time, thank god, else I would had been collecting them from the floor. Anyways, thanks to the co-instructor, a student like us :), she helped correcting it. Soon came the last day, we submitted the report, completed the formalities.. and yeah.. PS was over...and now its history
our second year was over...

50% engg??
I don't judge it by the grades, but by the way we ahdnled things at PS. All the work started at deadline, completed at extended deadline... :)
I sure am showing signs of a good engineer.. :)


FIND OF THE DAY : History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.