Are we on the right path??

Two days back the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalitha, has declared to cancel the TNPCEE (Tamil Nadu Professional Course Entrance Examination). In the sense only the HSC (Higher School Leaving) marks will be considered for the Engineering/Medical admissions from this year.

To my knowledge I thought that the TNPCEE is the only best examination at the high school level. It is because TNPCEE tests the anlytical skills rather the byhearting skills, on which the HSC exams entirely relies. The main reason they say for the cancellation is that the rural students donn't have fair chances when compared to the urban students. Yeah., I accept. The reason they say is right, but the solution is in the negative way. They tend to move in the wrong direction, I suppose. The solution should be like improving the teaching or education system in the rural areas rather than cancelling the exam itself.

The another issue is that when the TNPCEE is cancelled, there will be no common exam on which the selection can be grounded on. The students of State Board, CBSE, ICSE et al have to compete with the scores from their respective exams. Among these the State Board is considered the easiest one, so another dispute lies here.

I'm fond on Ms. Jayalalitha's decisions. She is educated, she does things well, she executes critical situations with proper knowledge and so many. But sometimes she too falls down like this. An another situation when I was against her decision was when she told to demolish the Queen Mary's college at Chennai. How could this be accepted? It has so many fames, a more than 100 year old college, has so many alumnis all over the world. Its a monument rather than a college by itself.

Someone needs to do something regarding this TNPCEE cancellation order. I'm totally against this. I don't know what the public feels and the how the reaction would be.

Sometime dreams come true

Yeh.. it happened to me when I got my offer at Trilogy (www.trilogy.com).

I had a tough time during the end of my last semester in my college. I had few failures though the reason was on my part. I was totally discouraged by myself. I thought I was not up to the mark and really want to prove myself to the world that I can do something that is unique. Yes, I was searching for some opportunity to work on that. It was during that time, my friend Vellai Pandi (nick-named "white") came with a visiting card of Mr. Deepak Babu, an employee of Trilogy, India. White told me that Deepak addressed few people at TCE and the talk was about his company and the openings that are available at Trilogy for the freshers. I have already heard of Trilogy from my friends and my brother. I thought this would be a good challenge to work with. I contacted Deepak and enquired regarding this. His reply was positive. I had then set my mind. I started to move towards the path leading to Trilogy. I lended a book on Algorithms and Data Structures from my department library. Since that was during my exam time, I have to postpone my preparations after the exams. But my mind was always towards it, even during my exams. Exams were over and I started to read the book. I always love reading books on Data Structures. But, at TCE the exposure to Algorithm concepts were less compared to the other top seeds in Tamil Nadu. I have to accept this. But I need to know these concepts if I need to attend the Trilogy interviews. I slowly got myself into that core of Algorithms and developed the habbit of calculating the complexities of each and every solution I make. I got help from Arunachalam (an Anna University student), Ekanth (my brother) and a huge from the Internet.

After a week or two, I thought that I'm prepared. I informed Deepak that I'm ready and forwarded my resume to him. He was always positive in his replies and I was asked to wait untill the interviews are scheduled. One fine day I got my interview date (18th was scheduled date). I stayed with my cousin Sankar for the days I spent at Bangalore. He has always been a motivating mind to me. His roommate Venkat was too friendly and encouraging. A cool and interesting personality. I had two tech rounds in the interview process at Trilogy. The interviews were all focussed on Data Structures, Algorithms, general problem solving skills and a programming language of my choice. I'm not going to say anything on the course of my interviews. Simply to say it went fine. Trilogy's interviews were of new kind to me. They don't care for your areas of interests or any specific things from your resume. They need people who can work on problems, give innovative solutions and so on. I'm happy that I have cleared the two rounds of interviews and got through my challenge. My college-mate Parasuraman has also been selected. We are first to enter Trilogy from TCE.

You know, I felt contented that day when I received my result positively. The *JOY* you get when something happens that has been your dream for the last couple days is different from the normal ones. Seldom it happens!! I have no words to describe them. Two days back I came to Madurai with my offer letter for Trilogy. I think I have made my parents feel good. Everyone around feels happy, that pleased me to my heart. Sometimes or other, things like this should happen to all, making them feel good.