Summer holidays were approaching and I got busy trying to find an
internship. Last year, I had done my summer training in TATA STEEL and had
enjoyed every bit of it. So I was looking forward to this year with much
enthusiasm. While searching for internships and discussing about it with my friends, I realized that most of them had applied for foreign internships via IAESTE
Student Chapter, Manipal.
The concept of going for a paid foreign internship interested me
and I began the tedious task of going through the list of internships available
and filling out details and writing a CV for each of them. An internship in
Germany had caught my interest and I really began craving for it. Along
with that, I had also applied in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. After
doing an industrial training last year, I figured that it would be great if I
could do a project in an academic institute.
While I did not get the internship in Germany (it went to my senior, a student who completed 3rd year and will move to 4th year), I soon got an
acceptance mail from IIT-KGP. Delighted, I made preparations for my departure. On
reaching, I was given the task to code the Load Flow Analysis by Gauss-Seidel
Method under Prof. Pabitra Mitra, Dept of Computer Science. I got accommodation in Gokhale Hall (well it was a PG hostel but now is a girls hostel).
To be honest, I was very scared in the beginning. I had not taken up computer as a subject in school since class 8 and hardly knew all the syntax in C++. My computer knowledge was limited to the elementary course we had in first year. In addition the the topic I was given was yet to be taught to me in third year. So for the first couple of weeks, I spent time understanding the concepts of load flow and finding all the library functions and syntax I required for the program. After a good 8 weeks of coding and testing with different bus systems, I finally completed the project and submitted my report.
I was delighted when it was accepted and I was given my
certificate with the prestigious IIT stamp on it.
