Posted Sunday, 23 May 2010
Short introductions are always hard, atleast for most people. My question is why; why do you want to stuff all the favorable aspects of your character into a couple of sentences? I don't. I don't even try. There's only one version of my short introduction that has worked for me- I'm Ram.
Now for a longer version, so that you'll have something intelligent to say when you talk to me. Everyone has a set of things they're interested in, and another set of things that they're good at. For me, those sets intersect at computer science. Most of work is public, and can be found on my GitHub or my Ohloh. Now, instead of boring you with the details of this (which I'm pretty sure my journal already does), I'll tell you more about my other interests. I like economics; it isn't an exact science, and everything's a case study, very unlike computer science. Still, it gives me partial explanations to things I'd like to know. Gregory Mankiw's book gave me a good headstart and The Economist gives me something to think about every now and then. I can't seriously pursue it until I finish this undergraduate course at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur though. Look up my resume and you'll see that I've mentioned that I expect to graduate in 2012. No, I'm not particularly brilliant at scoring in my exams.
Since I was little, it's been constantly hammered into my head that reading is a good habit. I do my part by periodically reading TIME, National Geographic, and editorials in The Hindu. I used to enjoy fiction as a kid, but I've almost totally switched to non-fiction now. History, political theory, and constitutional law excite me; enough to pick up and read books like Guns, Germs and Steel.
I'm terrible at sport. I don't play or follow a single sport. I spend that time watching movies and listening to fantastic classic rock. And I have a nice little dSLR that I use to take some random photographs and upload on my Flickr. Nothing serious, but I hope to improve enough to consistently get good photographs someday.
Notice how I've carefully left out which course I'm enrolled in. No, it isn't computer science. It's physics. Not that I'm opposed to the idea of studying physics- In fact, I love physics. I discovered a little late that I'm very good at something that's not physics. Unforutnately, like everyone else stuck in a rigid education system, I'm stuck doing physics now. What difference does it make? Instead of attending UML classes and writing Java (yuck!), I get to learn quantum mechanics. I'm joking ofcourse- there are plenty of computer science courses that I'd have loved to do.
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