Ishika Singh is a Y16 student who double majored in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering departments. She talks about how she found her own interests and made a last minute change in plans. Read to find out!
Disclaimer:- The views presented below are the author’s own and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general. This is an informal account of the author’s experiences at IIT-K.
College has made me feel both the best and the worst about myself! I entered IITK as an introverted, ignorant chemical engineering student with general, vague interests, and I am going out as a self-assured (ambivert) machine learning researcher (without any intent to attach the adjectives with the designations :D. Also, I didn’t qualify for a BC). My explorations were wider than I thought I could or would do, given the limited college timeframe and all the drama it accompanies. I decided to get into ML research in my 4th year, so it was far from a straightforward choice. This is also why I feel assured about it. I am grateful to IITK for the journey that made this choice as much apparent to me.
As you might have guessed, this story is about how to find “your thing” (if you don’t already know), switch fields at the last minute, what matters from that perspective, and what does not. For the first 3 years, I explored many domains, including electronics, chemical engineering research and industry (aka core), startups, finance, ML engineering and research, etc. To learn more about my interests and develop other dimensions of my personality, I also participated in extra humanities courses, cultural/sports/social/organizational activities, and even SSAC. People did say that I’m going too broad and that I should be getting more focused by then, which is honestly scary when you still don’t know what to converge on. The final realization of what appeals the most to me (or what I still don’t hate :P) came during my 3rd-year internship at HUL. A career in ML research seemed apt, from the three aspects vital to me: intellectual interest, financial intents, and whether it benefits society somehow. Howsoever late, the exploration solved the “passion” mystery for me, well, at least for the next decade or so ;).
I was aware that this was my last year at IITK. Yet, I was ready to take the hit by letting go of all easy career options after HUL and starting afresh. I could do so because I was motivated towards a future where my work made sense from the three perspectives listed above. I took up a second major in CSE in the 7th sem and worked hard both on current research projects and getting more projects. With less than 1% application success (or 99% failure) rate, I got 3 projects in hand (each with a certain fraction of supervision, to ensure that I don’t stagnate). I tried my best to get something out of all 3 in parallel within a year. My luck played well thereafter, maybe because luck is just proportional to focused hard work. After this phase, I secured a job at Adobe Research and CS PhD (USC) and MS (CMU) admits, finally putting an end to this “field switching battle”. Therefore, balancing hard work with getting things done helped me achieve my “goals”. Also, maintaining a decent grade average (regardless of one’s branch) usually makes switching (and many other things) easier. However, it is not impossible otherwise too. Among other things, I also followed the academic twitter and actively engaged in (free registration virtual) conferences as much as possible. This expanded my perspective about research, life as a researcher and brought diverse engagement opportunities right into my feed.
In the beginning, I used to think that the PhD dream might be too far-fetched as both my majors and the resume points were completely unrelated. I thought that I might always be stuck in the lesser end of the ML research circle. I might have settled for a data science job back then, and I was confused when I had to choose between that and doing a second major during the placements in 7th sem. But turns out that the aim was achievable; I just had to keep at it (without sacrificing any sleep :D). All of that was very challenging (and hence fun), both academically and emotionally, yet very feasible. I gave up much of my social life and entertainment hours during the first half of that year(and the pandemic forced me to give it up in the latter half). But my friends played an important role throughout. We (Gargi, Anant, Aditya) used to rant about our defeats and celebrate all our small and big wins by eating delicious but utterly unhealthy food. Prof. Shivali, Shivani, and Maneet have been the best teachers, I totally owe them all my good grades, except that they are not professors; they are my friends! And I owe Shreya for being consistently boring and available whenever I needed, and everyone else who was a part of my journey. I finally know that “the top 5 people on your list around you largely define your personality” is true, which also implies the importance of the company you have. Sometimes you can consciously choose your friends and acquaintances, and sometimes you can’t. The best strategy is to keep working on yourself and let the law of attraction do the rest 😉 (while also taking the initiative to connect when possible). Peer learning has helped me to a great extent. Throughout my 5 years, my approach was always to learn different skills from my peers instead of competing with them. There are many great people on campus, and they are usually approachable. You should try to get the info you need from them. Although a part of my story had a happy ending, it was far from being perfect. I regret missing out on connecting to several cool people on campus, both because of being occupied and my introversion.
College is so much more than this article or all As We Leave articles combined. I have shared whatever was important to me and maybe unique to my journey. These 4 years are the most densely packed experiences on anyone’s timeline, and the more one engages, the denser it gets. It’s like another world where you take birth in the first year and pass out in the last, with a drastic amount of upgrades and several secrets of life revealed. It’s a whole life within a life, characterized by all the emotions, cliffs and craters. Live it through, fail a lot and win a lot, figure out who you are, add value to other lives, and acquire a personality you can look up to – somewhat inspired and somewhat idiosyncratic!
Written by: Ishika Singh
Edited by: Abhimanyu Sethia, Atharva Dehadraya
