Project(err !)

Every time I publish some post I tell myself that next time it would not be that late and every time I end up with a delayed post. Major contribution in this great delay was also because of my crazy net connection, that chooses to connect whenever it wishes to and for amount of time it feels like comfortable with and at the speed it can get along with. Phew…

Well, the project chapter is almost closed now. Report has been submitted. Soft copy has been submitted. Demo before our dean has been done. Only final demo that will be before some intelligent guy from the industry, remains. And only the grilling sessions that I am going to face in coming interviews, remain. To cut the long story short these last months have really been tough and one more month gonna be on similar track.

I wonder what this project thing really made us. Firstly it was SRS then SDS then mid term evaluation then deadline for coding then deadline for testing then deadline for documenting then deadline for hard copy submission then soft copy submission then one more ‘final’ testing for the demo and then there would be one more demo on 8th before some big guy. We slogged ourselves like anything. It’s not like we chose it that way rather we were left with no choice. You can say in previous semesters I kinda had tough choice to study or not to study. And I in fact chose to sleep, in each and every class. What more, I get sms from any of my friend and first line reads “so to nahi rahi “ . But this sem, it was kinda some sword was aimed at your neck. You just need to turn your neck and the sharp cuts will cut through it in jiffy.

Unfortunately (or fortunately- grass is always greener on the other side, people say !) I study in a university which runs its system more in a school way. Proper classes on right time with numerous types of tests, assignments, seminars and projects. Bunking class ofcourse prevails, but not in that extent that is found in normal Indian universities. Nor did I ever enjoy the luxury of preparing for only one final exam. There are always one or two tests or kinda thing every week. When I talk to my friends they ask-“ array abhi to hue the tere exams” .Lecturers know you by name, by face and so no place to escape. Then end sem, 5 papers in 9 days, just one day gap for one paper, as usual. And so there should be no surprises if I say that each and every project except some exceptional case is made from the scratch by the students only without any source-forge.com-free-code help.

Here it’s just not in practice to bring the readymade code and say aloud its mine simply because staff is watchful of our work we are doing in labs and it’s never been in culture. We, a couple of times tried to get the solution for what bugged us on net but to our dismay we never got the exact solution for our problem. Then I was surprised to see the poor quality of the code that was categorized as freeware. If this type of code so called professionals write then we are better with our lines only. And we are proud of the fact that every line of hundreds of pages of code is written by us.

Well in our case, ours was one of the toughest and time consuming projects. To give you a fair idea about my project, in case you are bothered which project I am talking about( as I got a couple of messages asking me what project I am working on), its for my university’s MCA online entrance exam. Kind of BITSAT software- the one that BITS-pilani uses to conduct test for its BE program, or the IBM people uses to conduct DB2 exam or NASSCOM guys to conduct NAC or simply any online tests like GRE or GMAT, if you can relate with. Obviously it’s not full fleshed and nor it’s ready to work in real environment but yeah we prepared an application that has almost all basic minimum requirements that an online test must have and a good foundation to add on more features and enhancements. Basically we did what we were expected to, as nobody can make software incorporating all the features in a month or two. And we made it in about one month’s of coding from some 15th march to 20th April. In fact contrary to all pre-spread but true information that our dean keep on finding faults in even relatively better projects and grills you like anything with her difficult and perplexing queries during demo (a scholar she is), ours was really appreciated and she recommended in a persuading manner to get it complete in all aspects overcoming the limitations to implement it for the university. Earlier when I used to say arora and kapoor that our project has the potential of getting implemented, they’d laugh on me. Now they listened the same from the very person who is in charge of it. Well, it gets implemented in future or not is different thing altogether, the only thing that relieved us we were not torn apart rather got appreciation from teachers and the dean herself.

Apparently ours was not the only one to be appreciated but in the end it didn’t feel ki we were working on something uselessly. In fact it was a mixed feeling. Not to mention that the completion of this project was not that silky. We have been working on it for some three and a half months all 8 to 8( including pre and post coding stages) . Where mostly projects end ours starts. Many a times we would struggle with one error for a whole day or even at times for 2-3 days. The moment it got fixed, we’d shout in unison-‘chal gaya’ and people around would know we fixed some minor or major problem. Above all, platform was the real pain, since it was neither in our syllabus nor any single expert in the field is available in the campus. Books and dimmag-chaating of those who were partially in this field was the only ray of hope.

Just a couple of days ago when we were on the verge of submitting the soft copy on the server, one error finally decided not to leave us. More precisely I should say that the relative paths were not working for images, and adopting absolute paths would have been a self made blunder since ours is the web based application. Everybody we could bring to our system to sort out the problem gave up. Just that we thought we would be able to fix the problem before finally submitting it. But at the end moment we removed all the images hampering the design of the software (Though not that much thanks to style sheets). Though everything was running smoothly just that it lost its vista. Nothing really makes me that downhearted and dispirited when I am in college but that moment I could not help and a few droplets of saline water appeared to float in my eyes. I just wanted to rush to the loo and shed all those tears out as I do when I cry (rare its though) , somehow thought of not making a scene in the lab and need of the moment of submitting the project before deadline made them rest where they were in the same way- floating. That also when your day begins with a lot of compliments. Everybody who saw you for the first time in the day spoke out- beta, looking pretty ! . When everybody who saw and read your report when they try to make theirs out of it (in popular words- copy-pasting) spoke out- man, what a great report you have written, a simple yet professional language. abe dhansoo angreji chipkayi hai tune !. Amazing! That too when you are planning to go out on your teammate’s birthday treat. Though birthday went away 15 days ago, just because of this project work only you made it on the submission day itself. Well we all 3 teammates were ok as soon as we were done with submission thing or pretended to be ok, again no choices we were left with. Moreover we were satisfied on our part that we tried our best, if even the more knowledgeable people could not fix it, we are not at fault. The more ironic and surprising thing was that the error that we can remove in a nanosecond in any program, could not be removed after a good number of hits and trials and all sane and insane methods.

Anyways, we had a nice dinner that day, nicer it tasted as we all were hungry, damn to the same project, we skipped our lunch. Fortunately everybody in our team, is kind of bandi who dosen’t believe in mourning for the thing that is simply not in our control. So forgetting everything we 4 friends had a great time. And if you listen what we did in the restaurant you will go ROTFL, exactly the way we went and made attendants painfully smile every now and then. Some other day, I note it here, will surely write about it. Sitting and rambling on rikshaw in the pleasant evening (the one like bicycle) and listen to your friends about their boyfriends, particularly the intricacies of a pandemic gf-bf relationship is a gala time in itself as nowadays we really don’t get that much time to discuss each others personal life in detail.

Anyways, so my 8 to 9 schedule has finally ended now. Initially my parents used to say me – ‘make it a bit early anu, bahot late ho jata hai !’ . But despite my efforts I could never make it before 8.Lucky I am I got amazing parents who supported me every second.Moreove I must admit that jaipur’s is a great city if gals safety is concerned. Never had I faced anything that I felt bad or angry about.Touchwood ! Though those random comment-passers-in-hurry are available anywhere. Infact kapoor at the pillion seat usually asks me ‘ abe tune suna kya bolke gaya wo’ and I usually retort- ‘missed yaar ! sochna chahiye na in loafers ko ki ek baar mai jaroori nahi hai ki sunayi de, repeat karma tha ! ‘and we start laughing with our couple of more self-interpreted-but-interesting facts.

On a more serious note nowadays I am finally trying to put extra efforts for exams since this project thing didn’t leave much time to do anything else. To say the truth, there should be no surprise if I say after a few days ki I will flunk in W,X,Y and Z paper right after coming out of exam hall. Only four papers out of five ? yeah because the remaining one is Business communication and as past record reveals I got 2nd highest marks in the class in mid-terms so I think somehow I will survive. Meantime I really started to love this subject, otherwise tell me name of any subject where you prepare for just 1 or 2 hours and write some original crap in answer sheet citing those bullet points here and there and accidentally it appeals to your teacher. Really a nice subject :p , initially I used to be like ‘yaar ye mba walo ka subject hume padhake kyoon khaali-peeli time waste karte hai hamara’. But sorry, I take my words back. I have atleast one shagun ka subject where I can ask other people’s marks, just because they will ask mine’s in return and I gleefully can reveal mine.

You know what, I decided to end this post with the last para and as usual I am going on. So finally I end it here. As I have my 3 final practicals on 5,7 and 8th where I have zilch preparation and end sem exams from 13th to 21st which I am planfully trying to flunk( except one, you remember ?) and placements from 22nd may to 4th june where I don’t think any company would be stupid enough to select me, not to mention this whole project thing left no time to catch up with other subjects or even the placement preparation. But still I am trying my luck- that I learn those answers whose questions appear in question paper, that I somehow succeed to fool some company to recruit me, that I somehow manage to be tension-free and enjoy our holidays, we are planning to make at some exciting greenish places right after my exams and placements.

I know, quite a boring post but it’s what I am filled with right now. And frankly speaking I want to come out of all this as soon as possible. Long time it passed since I have seen any movie and ofcourse my to-see list is growing day by day. Well will try to make a couple of entries in between, till then bye, take care.

Listening sun ri sajaniya, next is kuch is tarah teri palke meri palko se mila le. Lovely songs, aren’t they ?

Added just before publishing the post- this whole post I wrote 3 days ago, thanks to my great net connection that I succeeded to publish it now !