Summer Internship with University of Hyderabad — Ayush from IIT Kharagpur
Wildcard Entry for: – 9th August 2012
Name of the intern: – Ayush
Institute: – IIT Kharagpur
Organization interned with: – University of Hyderabad
So it was decided! I was finally going to Hyderabad for my summer project.
Flashback: University of Hyderabad was a very unfamiliar name. I had never heard of it before until I was selected in the list of qualified students for summer project through IAS. I was desperately mailing many professors in many institutes but most of them replied in the negative. The coincidence was such that I mailed two professors in the University of Hyderabad and both of them agreed.
Now came the difficult part: which Professor should I choose? So I chose experience over quality and chose the more experienced professor. He also happened to be the Dean of the department. So all my tension went away immediately. I finally reached the campus after a tiring train journey. My parents were very worried about my accommodation, because the administration didn’t give me any accommodation. Luckily the research scholar under whom I worked asked me to stay with him! So accommodation problem was a gone issue now.
The research scholar was a little strict in the initial days, but later he became a really bad senior. One bad news circulated during those days, that my professor would not be there in the campus for around 15 days. I really got disheartened because I wanted to work under him and not under any research fellow! Nevertheless, the zeal inside me was always waiting to embrace new work. I started working on the experimental part of chemistry but didn’t find it interesting as my research scholar was more interested in extra-academic activities and most of the time he would either be busy with his cell phone or with friends. I was like a puppet for him, which I realized later.
I stayed in the research scholar’s hostel, so there was no one my age. I felt comforted in the lab only because I was never idle there. The first Sunday was coming and the planning started on Saturday. Obviously the research fellow was way too senior to me and I didn’t liked his presence much from the first day itself, so I decided I would explore the kingdom of Hyderabad alone. I went to many places of tourist attraction on subsequent Sundays and also watched my first 3D movie at IMax. The other lab people were very friendly to me, especially a post-doc student from Kerala who helped me in many activities.
One day I got the news that my professor had arrived. The very first day I went to my professor and asked to him if he could assign me any work personally. He told me to learn a software which previously I was not able to understand as I didn’t put much effort. But now I wanted to work under my professor, so I worked very hard to understand that software in detail. After a few days my professor was very pleased to know that I learnt the software and gave me some more work.
On the remaining days I worked on that project day and night. It wasn’t that tough, but as I was an amateur to this kind of work it was quite heavy for me. I completed my project work on the very last day of my stay in lab. My professor was very happy with my work and so was I.
University of Hyderabad gained respect in my heart after the I got to know more about it there. It was one of the best universities in Asia for studying and doing research in Chemistry. My total experience was close to awesome. I am still in contact with my professor now. Most importantly, my research experience changed my views about chemistry. I didn’t get a good rank in JEE, so I opted for chemistry in IIT Khargapur, hoping that I would change my branch later. But there was no great effort from my side. My mindset about chemistry totally changed after I did my project. I am now thinking of doing further studies in chemistry and becoming a pioneer in this field of science.
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