I Broke My Computer Apart After Taking a Training: Here's What I Learned.

When I walked into the training company I had signed up a month for, I wasn’t expecting much of an internship experience. When you think about it, most internships offered at a price are pretty much predictable; you meet instructors, they teach you in a classroom-like format for three or four days, you get the certificate that you shelled out a few thousand bucks for, you go home, and eventually, you forget what you learned.

This place was more or less the same. An Embedded Systems training company based in Kochi. In my junior year, I was taken in as a trainee there in Raspberry Pi. I had always wanted to learn and make and break with Pi. When we started, it was better than my expectations. The trainers had a conversational style even as they introduced me to Raspberry Pi with Image Processing. We had Digital Image Processing as a subject in class, but I had never been good at it.

With this refreshed approach and hands-on training, I developed a genuine interest in making. They taught me the basics. I developed a certain love for Linux. In a fit of sudden renewed enthusiasm, I decided to up the game. My first mission was to replace the Windows OS on my computer with Linux, in the process of which I ended up breaking it. That wasn’t a problem, because I soon picked it up. I fixed it and learned to install it correctly.

I became fairly good at Linux over the days. And you know what the best part was? I was actually able to put all my theoretical knowledge into practice at work. It was incredible because sadly, it is very rare that students in my league get to put into practice something that they learn about in class.

In a few days, I started toying with the idea of a project using Pi and Image Processing. I grew skilled in Python. And then I built that project I had been contemplating for some time. A Document Scanner based on Python that scans notes using the camera on a laptop. It was a fairly good project, one that had happened entirely because I had decided to learn something new.

I have to say, I did not learn everything completely from the institution that I went to, or the trainers I listened to. A lot of it was self-taught, and the training was an enabler; one that put me in an environment that was all about making and creating and learning.

Also, learning from people who are about the same age as you, makes so much impact. I wouldn’t have had the courage to openly ask simple questions to someone who was distinguished and experienced. But here, it was different. By the end of the one-month training, I was enriched in more ways than one.

If you did not land that prized internship offer and have to pay for training in the summer, don’t be disheartened. There are plenty of things that can come out of it if you have the will to learn and build and rebuild.

By senior year, I became identified as a technical person; I was helping other people with their image processing projects. After college, I also worked at the training company as a trainer for about three weeks, passing on my learning to my peers.

Learning is the single most essential food for growth. No matter where you are — in college, in a job, 20 years from now, that bit still stays relevant.