First day on internship

by Rishi on Monday, May 2, 2011


I was frustated once again when the security asked "Internship na?". These genius guys worked at an IT park and didn't know what an internship is!

"Oru training madhiri sir", I told. Ash, who had come with me, showed his offer letter to the security, "Idho paarunga offer letter".

"Aapar letter na?", the security asked as he looked at it. Ash had much more patience than me, he tried to explain him what an offer letter meant. "Oho", the security told, as if he suddenly understood the 3-page Terms & Conditions of the company at one glance. He got my offer letter too and 'checked' it with a suspicious frown. Finally, he was convinced that I and Ash were not here to bomb the park.

He used his card to open the 2-and-half-foot-tall glass doors, which seemed useless to me, I could walk over it. But still, an IT park needed all this to be an IT park.

We got to the 8th floor, where we were stopped by another security, who mistook internship for interview, and asked us to sign the interview candidates list. After a few minutes, we were fortunately rescued by an employee of the company, who knew what an intern was and that we were interns. He guided us into the company . Two other people from MIT Chrompet joined with us. We were given our own ID cards. Thank God, I thought, I needn't have to convince securities about opening glass doors any more.

Our host's speech had some unnecessary accents which was irritating. Worse, he accentuated our names. He gave an 'interesting' tour of the office - cubicles, some-acronym lab, cafeteria, and something else which I don't remember. The dialogues which my brain decided to store were, "Free lunch is provided for interns", "You could have biscuits and coffee at the cafeteria anytime",  "Do you have a bank account? So that we can credit your stipend".

Later, there was a supposed-to-be-interesting talk by another guy, who told us the usual back-then-we-didn't-get-all-facilities-you-guys-are-too-lucky talk the elder people give. I wanted to tell him, back-then-you-didn't-have-all-competition-you-guys-were-too-lucky, but I didn't, maybe because I was tired and hungry or I fell asleep due to the air-conditioning.

We were introduced to our mentors, me and Ash to one and the two MIT guys to another. The mentors were kind enough to excuse us for lunch, after briefing us about the two projects which we had to complete. The free lunch didn't taste good even though it was free, but it was still better than hostel food, except that we couldn't have more than one appalam per person. I guessed maybe appalam was costlier than air-conditioning.

When we came back to our cubicle with a yawn, the girl next to me was checking out Facebook and LinkedIn. (Earlier she was busy - reading The Deccan Chronicle on one tab and Gmail on another, besides the chat window which popped out from a corner of the screen. Multitasking!)

I sat before my machine, the internet was very fast, surprisingly faster than the intranet! So, you know, like every other human, I too was tempted to do some useless browsing. After checking Facebook, Gmail, Ymail, Blogger, WordPress and some other sites, I opened NetBeans and began to code. My mentor came and advised me not to starting coding until I get a clear idea of what I intended to build. He even told some Software Engineering principles and terms (If you are a CSE/IT student, you might know how I would have felt then).

With tired ears, I and Ash went to have coffee again (again x 4 actually). The MIT guys were there and complained that their mentor expected too much out of them. The poor guys had made notes which ran to two pages. Paavam, I thought. We suddenly realised we had worked too much for the day and stepped out. And that was my first day on internship.

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