I was a Computer Science student in my high school. Loved Math and CS but had a hard time with Physics in school, so bad I took up classes to clear NATA (the national level test to study architecture). I did clear and get into the top college for Architecture in Chennai. Further discussions with my parents and well wishers revealed that my interests still lied along Engineering. I was told Electronics and Communication is an “evergreen field” and it made sense to take it up as majors because it will give me the option of pursuing core fields or computer science itself upon graduation. And luckily, I got into CEG for my BE in ECE.

To be honest, I only knew two things about my technical interests when I joined college. 1. I liked coding and was a natural at it. 2. I liked Math no matter how boring the concepts were at times. Why Math and CS? Because I got a kick out of getting to the answer. And in all fairness, I keep finding a new interest everyday 😉

I wanted to explore more and figure out what I liked. My apprehension towards ECE still existed because, to me, I was bad at Physics, didn’t matter which sub-domain. I attended any workshop that happened around me (Image Processing using MATLAB, Introduction to ML and Basics of Robotics to name a few). I kept in mind to perform well in college academics - despite the notion that marks don’t matter , it really does. CGPA is important.

Second semester brought about some dramatic changes. First, I fell in love with Physics, thanks to professor Dr Sekar who showed how Engineering Mechanics can be understood if related to life. This spark gave the thrust to explore ECE core domains as well (although the Semiconductors paper revealed that I am not a person cut out for Device Level Modelling). Mid way through, lockdown happened. With so much time and so little work, I did a course on Deep Learning and IoT parallelly. DL was a hit, although I liked the concepts, IoT didn’t appeal much.

End of July, online semester was announced. Entering third semester, the fundamental core papers were introduced. My favorites were Electronic Circuits I - because of small signal analysis and Digital System Design - loved Logic Gates and Boolean Algebra. I think this was the pivotal point where I fell completely on the “I want to became an Electronics Engineer” plane. Maybe when I am in my forties rewinding memories and drinking tea, I can say for sure.

WHO KNEW YOU CAN CODE CIRCUITS?

I certainly didn’t. There were blocks of code in the Morris Mano book. I assumed I downloaded the wrong pdf (Online Batch 101). Turns out I didn’t. Turns out there were languages to model digital circuits - Verilog, VHDL and SystemVerilog. Jumped right into exploring them. Stumbled upon FPGAs and ended up doing a Coursera course. It was a very eventful semester. The paper I liked the least was Electromagnetic Fields and Waves (those co-ordinate systems killed me).

My interests grew along using tools like Vivado and Quartus Prime and I kept exploring. Meanwhile, I wasn’t greatly inclined towards subjects like Transmission Lines or Communication Theory. It felt very similar to how I assumed calculus was my jam when solving introductory worksheets in high school only for it to kick my ass while trying to prove “the volume of a given ball was minimum”.

By the end of fourth semester, I knew I didn’t want to pursue Communications related domains, not because I wasn’t good at calculus, but because I wasn’t intuitive when I tried learning. EC1 and EC2 gave me all the basics, and I thought analog circuit design might be interesting. Took up the elective CMOS Analog IC Design - handled by Dr P V Ramakrishna. Till date, I haven’t had a professor like him. Even when I struggled for intuition in class, he conveyed concepts with such ease that I was able to understand momentarily. Yet, when I went back and tried solving problems on my own well after the semester, it wasn’t intuitive. Decided to stick with Digital Electronics.

Parallelly, I was doing four things. 1. NPTEL course on Computer Architecture and Organization, 2. Data Analysis (ML stuff) for a department level project, 3. RTL coding for a project under PVR sir’s supervision and 4. Embbeded Hardware internship at Raptee Inc. CA course was a hit - started working on a 8-bit computer using logic gate ICs. ML stuff was fun to do but it took me time to figure out details as I wasn’t in constant touch. Loved every bit of the RTL work. Nothing can match the high I get out a successful simulation and synthesis. The internship revealed that I had a lot of learning to do with respect to Embedded Engineering.