Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Only intelligence is not enough to carry students to the top. I think it’s the passion. I have already mentioned about the importance of passion in my previous post.

Passion is a force – sometimes an uncontrollable force – that infuses life with meaning, joy, and even outrage. In any event, passion fosters commitment and determination.
It creates the energy and drive required to do what others think is impossible. Passion is something which creates fire; and it also provides fuel as well.

I have seen highly talented students getting ‘Grade C’ in their courses because of their lack of hard work. And not being passionate enough is one of the main reasons of not working hard. 

Please note that I am not worrying about failures. As long as the passion is there, it doesn’t matter if an individual fails or how many times he fails. I would still work with a person who is passionate enough to learn but failed few times in the past than a successful person who is not passionate enough to learn more. It doesn’t matter for passionate but failed students what other people are saying about them. They will keep going forward, and will eventually achieve the success.

We are aware of the intellectual capital or the potential talent of an individual who is also studying the same course that you are also studying. So we don’t have to talk about that aspect any more. Now it’s the actual passion and energy that someone is putting into his studies that matter the most. Passion is one way which will differentiate you from the rest of the students. 

The bottom line is, passionate students keep moving forward, and keep climbing to the top and make the most of whatever intelligence they possess.

Note: For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates, Entrepreneurs

I learned this philosophy called “Vuja Daze” from a book The Student Success Manifesto by Michael Simmons.

“Vuja Daze” is derived, of course, from the French “déjà vu,” the sensation of having seen something before, though you know you haven’t. However, vuja daze, instead of having to do with memory, means to experience something new, out of your normal realm of activities.

This philosophy basically suggests doing some activities which might be totally new to you. For example meeting with new people, reading a book which generally you wouldn’t have read, watching a movie which generally you wouldn’t have watched, playing sport which normally you don’t play, or something similar on these lines.

There is a saying that sameness breeds sleepiness. In our daily routine, both in academic and personal, we have to do many tasks which are monotonous and are repetitive. It is bound to happen that we get tired and bored by doing those things again and again. And as human mind blocks out repetition and sameness, it hampers our productivity and we tend to do more erroneous work. Incorporating vuja daze into our life is a way to kill this boredom and get refreshed. It means stimulating our brain periodically so that we are efficient and productive when we are studying or working. 

I implemented this philosophy in my life recently in last two weeks. I generally don’t watch fiction movies like Harry Potter and did not play Tennis since last 6-7 years. But last week I watched Harry Potter & The Order of Phoenix (yes, I know I am an odd man out in this world by saying that this was my first Harry Potter movie) and played Tennis. Definitely both activities were refreshing change for me. I also observed that I was very productive in last week while working on my tasks.

Vuja daze means consciously pursuing new experiences that could charge you and stimulate you. When we implement vuja daze, we bring energy and liveliness into our life. Go experience it! 

You have a super productive week ahead!

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates, Entrepreneurs

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. — Isaac Asimov

I recently read this quote and was fascinated by its meaning. So I decided to expand this thought to a blog post.

First, please answer these questions - 

• When was the last time you spent some time on learning something on your own which was solely for your own development and which was not required because your job or school assignment demanded it?
• How frequently you spent some time for self-learning?

You might realize that we spend very little time on our own for our own development.

If you remember, when we were kids, our learning was very rapid. We learned most of the things during our childhood days because we were curious to learn those things. And most importantly, we learned many things without any formal schooling. It was the best example of self-education. 

But this self-education process extinguishes as we grow up.  When we are in the school or working in the industry, we are learning what our job or school require. Most of the times, we have to learn that we do not enjoy. And if we don’t find such learning experience an exciting one then we don’t really grow from it. We barely manage to learn what is required so that we can pass the exam or complete the assigned task. 

We don’t learn what we want to learn. We don’t grow the way we want to grow. But we don’t have any other option as well. We can’t blame the school or our job for such situation. I don’t think we can remove this situation. I think we have to find the solution around this existing scenario. 

We have to develop a self-education environment. We have to design our own curriculum such that we learn beyond what it is taught in the school and in the job life. We have to enjoy our curriculum such that we really learn and grow from it. 

I recently talked to my supervisor, a very young and highly knowledgeable person. I discussed with him how he learned all these things in such short duration. To my surprise, he told me that he just has a Bachelors degree and did not pursue his Masters. He also informed me that he did not take any extra professional courses or training classes. All his knowledge is an outcome of the extra time he invested in self-learning. Pushing hard after office hours, learning between available free time, identifying what to learn, and practicing it on continuous basis – this is how he managed to learn what he wanted to learn.

Let it be a student, a working professional or an entrepreneur, there is no alternative to self-education. It is no more an optional thing for extra performance. It is a necessity. 

We have to create our own curriculum, decide the time line and just work on it. The challenging part would be to define our own curriculum. 

Creating our own curriculum involves:

• Writing down our quantifiable goals
• Identifying what to learn to achieve those goals
• Deciding our measures of success to track our progress
• Preparing a schedule to complete our self-learning
• Discussing and refining our plan with our friends or mentors
• And the most important thing – committing to our plan.

To make this self-learning process more interesting, try to align our self-curriculum such a way that it helps our job life or school life either directly or indirectly.

Please take some moments to design your curriculum by this weekend. And lets start achieving our goals through a enjoyable journey.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates

I completed my undergrad studies from Govt. College of Engineering (COEP), Pune – the third oldest engineering college in Asia and one of the reputed colleges in India. COEP was a part of University of Pune, now is an autonomous institution. After 2 years, I came to University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles for my graduate studies. Before coming to USC, I had been to USA for job purpose through my earlier employer. So I knew the culture and lifestyle of USA quite well. But still during my first week of stay at USC, I was collapsed for numbers of reasons. One of the major reasons was – academic challenge. For me, the US University education pattern was literally an academic cultural shock!

The education pattern in US universities is way different than the Pune University. In Pune University, we used to get the Preparation Leave before our exams. And we used to slog hard in those last few days and prepare for the whole semester. When I look back at those days, I find it very funny pattern. I still wonder how could that kind of pattern even used to work. And I am quite sure that most of the Indian Universities had pretty much similar situation. In 1 month, we used to complete the studies of 4 months. So theoretically, in 8 months (for 8 semesters) we could have finished our Bachelors, which generally is a 4 years’ program.

So if you are coming from a similar undergrad background, and pursuing your Masters in US, and if you are thinking to continue your undergrad study pattern to study just before the exam, then it will be a crime. You need to study diligently for almost every day. You will be bogged down in challenging and exciting homework assignments, projects, and course reading throughout your semester for more than 3 courses. Preparing for these assignments sincerely will help you tremendously to achieve strong fundamental knowledge and hence high grades in your courses. They are the best test platforms to prepare for exams. If you work on these activities consistently, you will be ever ready for the exams.

Also, GPA is not only about your final exam score. It includes your throughout year’s performance. So scoring full percentages in homework and projects boosts your chances of getting “A” grade, provided that you do considerably well in the exams. Questions in the exams are conceptual, design based, and problem solving oriented. Every question in the exam will be new for you. There is no way that you can prepare for exams by mugging books or notes like we used to do before. Understanding the concepts and practicing the problems throughout the semester consistently, is the only way to score high in exams.

Once again, consistency is the killer app, almost in all situations!

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates

I already emphasized the importance of building a strong network in a previous post your network is your net worth. This suggestion is the next step of building a strong network. We not only need to build strong relationships but also long lasting relationships. Building a network is not about just connecting with numerous people. Its not about just increasing number of friends in your Orkut or MySpace network. I am talking about serious relationships in which you care for the other party.

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar

You need to develop trust in these relationships. My mentor says, there are only two types of relationships –

1. Long term.
2. Very long term.

The rest are not relationships, they are just casual transactions.

For example, building relationships with your friends, teaching assistants, professors can be a huge plus in the long term. You never know how one of these people will help you in your future professional dreams. But they will care for you in future only if you keep caring them.

When I graduated from the school, and started my professional career, I learned few challenges and interesting aspects of VLSI design about which I was not aware of when I was in school. But industry people thought that I would knew this because it must be taught in the school. I realized that my professor didn’t cover this topic in his course. As an action item, I not only suggested to include this topic in the course to my professor, but also provided relevant reading material, problems to solve, application notes to him. Of course he thanked me for my deed and assured me to ponder over it seriously.

After that, we keep going back and forth on some interesting topics. He helps me a lot in my decisions, and career moves, at the same time, I also try to add some value in his life.

We have to understand that relationships will only sustain when there is mutual value. Single sided relationships will end eventually. So we have to diligently work on building long lasting relationships when we are in school or in big company.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates, Entrepreneurs

We all know the importance of values. But we don’t really understand what it takes to follow them when we are students. I started respecting and following this "value based life" aspect when I was working with Infosys Technologies Ltd. Infosys has their punch line, which goes like this –

Powered by intellect and driven by values.

And I was highly impressed by their value system when I was working with them. I am a die-hard fan of N. R. Narayan Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys for building such a great empire, which is truly based on values.

What a student has to deal with Values?

Our current education pattern seems to be marks oriented. Students are only being prepared for exams and they are not exposed to morals and values that will prepare them for life. But many academic institutions now realize the importance of ethics in the education process and added ethics courses to the curriculum.

Let me give you the definition of ethics: it is good to maintain life and to further life. It is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion. – Albert Schweitzer

In our student lives, we will come across many situations where we will have two options to achieve our objectives – a value-based option and a value-less option. By choice, nobody chooses the value-less option. In academic life, peer pressure changes the students’ ethics. Stringent homework deadlines, minimum required GPA criteria, limited seats for assistantships and job offers might make students to compete with each other on unethical basis. In this competitive world, we tend to hurry for the results. We don’t have much time to think and practice the values and ethics. For students, their grades on tests and high salaried job offers are the major concerns.

By choosing value-less option, we may achieve a short term success, but that model is not sustainable in the long run. Lying, cheating, and copying are the attributes of short term success. You will see people around you getting better results in profession than you just because they could lie.

What path we should follow?

We should not even think of following short term success path through unethical ways. We always need to stick to our own values, and believe that in the long run, it’s the value based system that will last longer. Whenever we make any significant decisions, it will be based on our values so it’s important that we know what they are. Having values is definitely very important. It is the part of our upbringing and it should be in us.

How to build our value system?

But what if we don’t have our value system fully matured? Not many of us are aware of all principles and ethics. The simple workaround for this is – to learn from others. Identify your role models. See what values these people follow in their life to achieve their objectives. We can also learn from our friends, colleagues. We cannot stop learning new values from others. We need to keep our eyes open and keep observing others for their value system. It’s not just one or two principles. It’s the whole integrated system. So we have to keep building our value system consistently. I strongly believe that success will bound to follow if we follow the right path.

The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself. – Edward Ericson

For more articles from this series, please visit - Beyond Intelligence

Do not compromise on your field of interest

Targeted Audience: Students

Compromising on your area of interest for funding opportunity in some other area is very common situation I have seen amongst the students. Yes, funding is critical but there are always some ways to manage this worry. I shall cover how to handle financial worries at later part of this series. But in this discussion, I want to emphasize the importance of your area of interest.

It is very important to understand that postgraduate studies are easy to complete if you want to achieve just 3.0 GPA and get the degree, but it takes tremendous efforts if you want to excel and aim for more than 3.8 GPA. When it requires tremendous hardwork from you, then your interest is the only incredibly compelling emotion that enables you to slog hard, to push and stretch your limits and to perform high. It is hard to reproduce similar kind of passion for other subjects, which are not of your interests. Even if you are funded in some non-specific areas, it becomes difficult to excel in those subjects.

I know few of my genius friends, to whom I still admire the most, who have done these kinds of mistakes. They compromised on their area of interest, and finally landed into some other job profile. Now they don’t seem to be passionate enough about their technology, about their job life and also about their ambitions. It’s like having no passion in what you do is a small bug. Once it enters into our body system, slowly and steadily, it damages the whole body system.

On the same note, we need to understand that the change is inevitable. Your interests are going to change along the period. Be flexible, be open, and keep following your passion. Do not restrict yourself to one set of mind. Being open will help you to acquire what is new and in demand. That kind of outlook will help you to always do what is required in the industry and always be in the hot position.

Getting reward isn’t about making only right choice; it’s about practicing that choice consistently. — Aditya Kothadiya

When I decided to pursue my MS, I observed that all my seniors were going for Biomedical Instrumentation specialization. I also thought that Biomedical Instrumentation is going to be the next big thing, so I should also pursue my MS in Biomedical only. But then while working in the industry, I realized that I have more passion for hardware and software integration. So I decided to go for Embedded Systems. After I came to USC for Embedded Systems program, I learned that the department did not offer the courses in Embedded Systems. The respective professors were busy in their research projects such that they had to cancel those courses. By that time, I had taken some courses in Digital Design area, and realized that I am more interested into Architecture and Digital Design field. And finally I decided to work in VLSI Digital Design domain, and I am truly enjoying my work as I landed into my interest.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Learn to say “NO”

Targeted audience: Students

This is hard and tricky part. But learn to say NO when it is required to say NO. Let’s consider a situation, where you and your friend were assigned homework and its due in next 2 days. Assume that you just started working on that assignment as its still 2 days before the due date. But your friend completes that assignment, comes to you and asks for a movie. 

Now what will you do? Will you accept his invitation for movie or will you complete your assignment? 

It’s a tough situation to take a call for two reasons – 

1. You also want to watch that movie
2. And he is your friend and you don’t want to disappoint him by saying NO.

In such situations, you need to apply the rule of laser beam – staying focused! You need to first analyze your work load, analyze its priority, and analyze your expertise level to complete that work load. Based on these parameters, you should take the decision whether to accept friend’s proposal or stick to your assignment completion plan. Your friend, who is inviting you for a movie, can complete that assignment in 1 day. But it is not necessary that you can also complete the same assignment in 1 day. Learn to say “NO” if you have some priority work to complete before you accept any invitation.

Stay focused like a laser beam.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence

Your network is your net worth!

Targeted Audience: Students

Networking is always useful in any walk of your life. Finding opportunities, converting those opportunities into actions, and accumulating these actions for the ultimate success – all these things cannot be achieved single handedly. My mentor, Rajesh Setty always taught this to me –

What we know is important. But, who we know is more important than what we know. What is also important is how we know who we know.

During our academic life, when we are away from our parents, our friends and our seniors are our new family members.

These new roommates and friends play a vital role in our academic success by staying with us in both good and bad times. It is very crucial to get nice roommates. And that’s where our network of old friends and seniors come into picture.

Instead of trying to figure out things for ourselves by ourselves, we need to leverage our network to provide right opportunities for us at the right time. Seniors guide us in selecting relevant courses based on their experiences and industry requirements.

They inform us about the potential vacancies for RA or TA positions when they are graduating and leaving those positions.

When they are working in corporate world, they help us in forwarding our resume in their companies and guiding us for interview preparations. And referrals work much better than any job application process. It is like half the battle won.

They provide us their used materials like photocopies, books, notes, which help us to save a lot money.

The advantages of leveraging from your network thus goes on and on. But it’s not always about taking. It rather first starts with giving. We need to invest time to give without expecting a return for some time. These relationships do not happen as it is. They have to be carefully constructed and then maintained. Every relationship takes considerable amount of our time and we should consider that time as an investment towards building that relationship.

We may not see the benefits and rewards of these investments immediately, but in long run we will see the time invested in building these powerful networks getting to its fruition.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence
 

Its Cleanliness,
dear!

Targeted audience: Students

Beyond intelligence, lie all the usual words: discipline, endurance, and luck. Consider one
of such usual words – discipline. It is very simple to understand what it
means, but equally tough to maintain and follow it in our day-to-day lives.

I am a strong believer of one of such disciplines –
cleanliness. Especially, if you are a student and if you are living with your friends,
then it becomes very hard to maintain the cleanliness in your apartment. I
understand that you are a student and your primary objective is to study hard.
And you might not consider it is important to spend time on cleaning than studying.
But if you can maintain the discipline of cleanliness, it will add tremendous benefits
to your daily academic routine. It will help to improve your performance and efficiency.

Clean environment is about having a mental peace. Cleanliness
shows your attitude; it speaks about your personality; it is your image amongst
your friend network.

Cleanliness is your
necessity.

After working until late night in department lab on your class
assignments, you want a pleasant environment when you come back home to rest
and sleep. When you wake up in the morning, you want to start a new day with fresh
mind and fresh energy. When you are studying in your room, you don’t want to
get buried down in the piles of books and printouts.

It is hardly a matter
of few minutes.

Cleaning your apartment on regular basis is not only an easy
task but also is less time-consuming task. It takes two minutes to clean your
bed when you wake up in the morning instead of keeping it an untidy state. It
is the matter of few minutes to wash your plates and utensils immediately after
you are done with your lunch or dinner. You can comfortably spend few hours of your
weekends once in a week to clean the restroom.

Consistency is the
key to all disciplines.

We all are aware of this but most of the times we fail to
follow it and we act on it only when the situation goes beyond our control. We have
spiky nature when it comes for cleanliness and we clean the apartment once in six
months. The key is to be consistent. It takes very few steps to follow the consistency
and to get rid of this spiky behavior. I can’t buy your argument that you don’t
have time to clean your own bed and your own apartment. Because I can’t digest
the fact that if you have 2-3 hrs to watch movies and videos on YouTube; if you
have 1-2 hrs to browse internet for no meaningful purpose, if you have 3-4 hrs
for chatting on messenger, then how come you don’t have 10-15 minutes to clean
your own stuff?

Talk. Plan. Act.

As I said earlier, this behavior is widely seen when you are
living with friends. I know, its not your fault. Its your friend who is
unclean. But you can be the change if you want to see it. If your friend is not
mature enough to observe your discipline, then do not hesitate to talk about
it. Plan an alternate schedule for each other. And then act on it.

In nutshell, spend some time on practicing some disciplines,
which will help your academic performance in direct or indirect ways. And to
maintain clean apartment is one of such practices. I am sure it will help a lot
to study well and score high.

Fight on! 

To read more articles from this series, please visit Beyond Intelligence.

Read it before you need it!

Targeted Audience: Students

I always put this discipline at the top of my all academic disciplines – read it before you need it. In my school days, I failed to fulfill it numbers of times. But whatever few numbers of times I accomplished it, it helped me tremendously. I highly recommend following this discipline in your daily school routine. I know sometimes it gets really hard to be consistent because of some other study or work load. But it is okay if you fail to achieve it always. It is more important that you try to follow it again whenever time permits.

Now classes must have started in full fledge and all professors must be bombarding tons of knowledge, bunch of assignments, and deadly projects on you with an insane rate. In this race of achieving the deadlines, most of the times, we forget to understand the basic concepts and hence the subject thoroughly. Reading it before you need it will help you tremendously to grasp the understanding of the subject at very early stages and very efficiently.

The discipline is simple. You just need to read some of the topics, which will be getting covered in the next class. You do not need to understand it completely. It is just to get familiar with the terminologies, the flow of the subject, and to know what to expect next in the class. I personally found that pre-class preparation always helps to grasp the subject immediately.

Also if you understand what you read before it is been taught in the class, then you have an added advantage to answer the questions being asked in the class. Based on your understanding, you can also discuss some of the advanced concepts in the class.

Now you may ask that how do you know what to read next. I believe most of the times the detailed schedule is already posted in the beginning of semester. In case of doubt, ask your professor at the end of class that what he or she is going to cover in the next class. In worst case if you don’t attend the class or if you forgot to ask, send an email him or her.

Your this behavior will also show your sincerity towards your preparation of the course work. There are very high chances that your professor might get impressed by this sincerity, which will help you during evaluation of your assistantship application.

Once again, before sleeping, just browse through the chapters that you know will be covered in the tomorrow’s class.

To read more articles from this series, please visit Beyond Intelligence.

It’s still not paperless!

Targeted Audience: Students

I believe that you can score very high in your academic career by practicing certain disciplines irrespective of your intelligence level. Of course, if you are a super-intelligent person, then it is a no brainer that you can score high. But please note that, I said, you ‘can’. It is not guaranteed that you ‘will’. I have seen few of my genius friends getting C grades in graduate classes because of their lack of discipline. The problem is not when you are a super-intelligent person and rest of the class is intelligent. The problem is when even a single person from rest of the class is as super-intelligent as you are. It is the discipline of a person, which will distinguish the final performances of both.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives. –Clint Eastwood

When I say beyond intelligence, it means your systematic hard work and discipline you follow in your day-to-day life. There are some key ways to develop discipline patterns in your daily routine. In this series, I will cover each of these disciplines, which are essential to excel in student life. Many times, they may sound trivial, but believe me, I have experienced that sometimes these trivial traits help tremendously in unseen situations. But if you follow these practices, you will see its fruition in long run in any walk of your life.

Go Paper

As the semesters are starting, let me start with the very first discipline. This is the first thing you should do when you are registering for any course. Buy a separate notebook for that course and write down following details on the inner side of the front cover of your notebook:

• Course number and name
• Class timings and location of class
• Professor’s office hours and detailed contact information
• TAs’ office hours and contact details
• Important dates of midterm and final exam of all courses you have registered

Of course, I am assuming that you are writing your full details like name, contact address, phone and email address on the first page of your notebook in case it get lost. You cannot imagine the panic you may have to face during the exam period when you will find out that your class notebook, in which you have written down the golden words of Professor, is not with you.

Even though you will get all this information on the web, it is highly advisable to write it down on handy paper (internal notebook cover). You just cannot guaranty the availability of resources like computer, internet access at any given time at any place. It’s very essential to have all these details available when you need it the most.

I still remember following incidence. During one of my classes, Professor wanted to postpone the midterm exam. And as you know that, the dates of midterms are decided way early to avoid clashing of multiple exams on the same date. During that class, Professor took the vote to postpone the exam to certain date and asked if anybody’s exam is clashing on the same date or not. Well, I had taken three courses during that semester so the probability was little high that one of the other exam dates may clash. But when he asked for it, I was not having any clue that I was having another exam on the same date. In the class, I voted for ‘Yes’ but then had to suffer for it on the day before exam. It would have been very helpful to have other exam dates handy in my notebook.

The bottom line is, keep the critical information handy, and do not rely on internet everytime. Use of smart mobile devices can be another alternate to this discipline.

For working people, please read my previous post on similar subject.

To read more articles from this series, please visit Beyond Intelligence.