Summer Internship at Bhagat Medical Services – Mayur Deepak Wadhwani from TSEC Mumbai
Mayur Deepak shares an insight experience of interning in the field of Medical Imaging at Bhagat Medical Services Pvt. Ltd. Mayur is a final year student of Biomedical Engineering at Thadomal Shahani Engineeing College, Mumbai. Read on and explore what does he have to share.
One month internship in Medical Imaging
I am a Biomedical Engineer, well almost there. I just completed my third year. In the month of reprieve that Mumbai University allows us after completion of each year, I got an Internship. My purposes of applying for an internship was simple–I wanted knowledge and experience. I had enough of theoretical data and I wanted practical hands-on experience. My luck here was that I had a distant cousin who was in the same field and he did me a favor by talking to his boss for letting me work there for a month.
The company was a small scale, off the internet based company specializing in CT-scan machines. They repaired, maintained, serviced and sold refurbished CT-scan machines. What was better for me was that this is my field of interest–Medical Imaging. Bhagat Medicals isn’t a big company. It just thrives on the prospect of people selling outdated machines, which can be used for parts and hospitals which can’t afford latest technologies in medical field. Its India, this is how stuff works. They only worked with CT-scan machines and they have been doing the same for the last decade. Simple cognitive process behind it: keep it simple, focused and you will attain expertise. I liked that.
My work was of ease: assist the engineers in their work and, at the same time, try to grab whatever information I could get my hand-on. I had to work on site with these 3 engineers–Nagesh, Narender and my cousin Yogesh. With each, I had done work in one site or the other.
I learned a lot. I already knew some basics behind the machine even though I hadn’t studied the entire theory of the machine. Even the simplest things like how to handle an IC Board were given prime importance, with same sentence repeated again and again till it was ingrained into my brains. In the starting two and a half weeks I was allotted to work either in the warehouse or on sites which were in close proximity. So, I worked in Bhiwandi, Ulhasnagar and Dombivali. All of these places I had to either answer breakdown calls (of course I accompanied the engineer and he got the breakdown calls) or I had to test some parts. But in the last one and a half week I had to go Pune for uninstalling (removing) a defunct machine and install a new better machine. This was the most hectic time as I was away from my family, had no Sunday’s leave and no homemade food.
I’ll leave the technical aspects of the internship, though important and are what made this internship bearable, I would rather focus on what troubled me the entire month. Firstly, I aspire to be an engineer in biomedical because I like it. I enjoy the studies I do, I looked forward to leaving college and then pursuing my goals in life. The ideal life which I realized was far from truth. Its ugly once you leave college. No jobs, jobs that hardly pay anything. Jobs that requires freshers to have a year experience. How absurd is that!
Not to mention that the wages are hardly what one would expect after investing so much in studies. And the work one is exacting too much. I wouldn’t presume that the engineers who I worked with were distraught and unsatisfied, but I can bet that they do not think much when an opportunity knocks. They advised me to leave India, pursue my career somewhere where there is at least some development, some scope for my growth, some future for me. And I saw enough to understand this too. More than once, I saw them getting pressurized from both their boss and their customers, and found them stuck in the middle. They had to compromise, make the best of what they had. And never be sated with what they did. And the week in Pune was the worst. Every difficulty that could be thought of hampered us. Working the entire day, with late night dinners and early morning check outs from the lodge. I heard stories too. About some men who have decades of experience, who can’t work without being inebriated. About how the stress is so much that one can’t live without smokes or drinks. Drugs obviously couldn’t be afforded.
It may look like I am complaining about the workload but I am not. In fact, I have no problem with working overnights for days, it is the scenario that depresses me. I studied so much, from school and so forth, I have always been a guy with good academics, scoring great grades. Why? Because everyone told me better the grades now, the better the future. Now, I find that the future is dark. No amount of great grades is going to change that. I find that while I rushed into leaving the school and pursued the opportunity at a great future I left the irretrievable past. And now I stand at the crucial part when there is no going back and I don’t want to go forward either. I find myself facing real life. And it sucks!
I got my stipend, 5000 rupees, which are still in my bank untouched. In the entire month, I missed my college friends, I missed my family, I find myself longing to complete my internship and go back to college and enjoy it. I realized that maybe the people in one’s life are of more importance then I give to them. More than once, I told my parents I missed them, expressed my friends how much I missed them. And now I don’t leave a chance to spend the time along.
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